


Ice Hawks: An Ace Combat Story

by Jordan_C_Wilde



Category: Ace Combat
Genre: Aurelia - Freeform, Cayenne - Freeform, Gen, Original Character(s), Strangereal
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-04
Updated: 2019-05-12
Packaged: 2019-08-08 10:44:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 22,233
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16427852
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jordan_C_Wilde/pseuds/Jordan_C_Wilde
Summary: This story is set after 5 years after the end of the Circum-Pacific War (Ace Combat 5) and follows the andventures of the 257th interceptor squadron of the Free state of Cayenne and their quest to defend their home country.Cover art by the one and only https://frostiboi.tumblr.com/





	1. Prologue: One of those nights

Prologue: One of those nights

The stars shone bright in the night sky above the icy countryside around the lone airstrip of Kiers End on the northernmost tip of the country of Cayenne. It was a cold and cloudless night over the small airforce facility that was home to the 257th interceptor squadron, the Ice Hounds. Ever since the war between Osea and Yuktobania ended 5 years ago, the military budget for the small nation was decreased with every passing year and so it happened that the airstrip was only staffed with about forty percent of its intended capacity. Furthermore, many members of the remaining technical staff were complaining about the stream of supplies and spare parts, or rather lack thereof, that was coming, or rather not coming, their way.

But all of that didn’t bother 2nd Lieutenant Jackie Reiges who was sitting outside her planes’ hangar, staring at the sky. She just sat their, her breath rising from her lips as steamy puffs before dissipating into the cold night air. She was trembling slightly from the biting cold, and her nose was running slightly, but that wasn't of any concern for her. After all she grew up in the most southern populated country before the arctic circle. Besides, she had other things on her mind than worrying about the cold.

“Starting from monday, you will be Husky squads flight lead, Reiges.” The words of the base commander were still reverberating inside her head like an annoying fly. Normally, she'd be glad to be offered such an esteemed position, but the fact that she had to take that position at all meant, that her former flight lead would leave.

“Captain Peters is resigning. He said something about being past his prime or something. At any rate, you’ll be taking his place.”That's what the commander said right afterwards. 

Jackies' stomach still revolted at the word ‘resign’. She knew how much Peters loved flying. In fact he was the very person who taught her the basics. He was her mentor, the person who had always believed in her and encouraged her to keep pushing her limits. And now he'd just go away like that?

“Impossible...” she muttered to herself as she rose from the freezing cold ground. Her legs and arms were beginning to go numb so she figured it was time to finally get inside. She had lost track for how long she had been sitting outside the hangar for but it must have been about two hours.

Still deeply lost in her thoughts she began to slowly make her way towards the barracks. The iced over tarmac of the taxiway was sparkling in the light of the starry sky and the ice cold, crisp night air bit into her face like a ferocious dog. But she was too distracted with mulling over her own thoughts, at least until an all too familiar voice tore her out of her musings.  
“You're gonna catch a cold if you keep that up Reiges.” Captain Peters mused. Jackie was startled by the voice of her squadron leader and froze dead in her tracks. “Wha- Oh, captain! I did not see you at all! Sorry, sir.” She stuttered, still not sure how he could have been just around the corner from where she'd been sitting for all this time without her noticing. Swiftly recovering she added  
“But sir, what are you doing out here at this time?”

The captain shrugged, a cigarette dangling from his mouth. His the gray streeks in his usually dark brown hair were shimmering slightly in the moonlight. “Felt like having a smoke I guess. And you? What brings you out here?”  
He spoke in the same genuinely warm tone that he always used, just as if nothing was about to change. “You wouldn't pass up on an opportunity to take a nap just like that, so what's the matter.”

Jackie didn't quite know how she could answer that question. After all, she couldn't just tell him that she didn't want him to go away. “Well sir,” she finally said “I guess I am just nervous about tomorrow. It'll be a complete change of pace for me to fly as the lead plane all of a sudden. I really don’t know if can meet the standard. This whole situation is just really...” she paused for a second, trying to find the right word “...uncomfortable, sir.”

Peters chuckled slightly, exhaling a plume of smoke that slowly drifted into the sky. “I see where you're coming from.” He mused, taking the cigarette out of his mouth to gaze at the glimmering ashes on its tip. “But really now, what is it? The way I know you, you’d be just as satisfied with being the last plane in the formation, as long as you were able to fly .”

He had seen right through her, as usual. It didn't surprise her really. She had spent so much time under his wing, he could read her like an open book. Once again, she found herself looking for an answer. Or rather an excuse. But none would come to mind, none that he wouldn't uncover in an instant anyway. She swallowed the lump that had began forming in her throat and forced out the words“Sir, permission to speak freely?”

“Speak your mind second lieutenant.” Peters said before drawing another breath through his cigarette. “The thing is, sir,” she said averting her gaze “I'm troubled by the thought of you just leaving like it's no big deal.” She was silently surprised at herself for phrasing it the way she did.

“I see.” Captain Peters mumbled, finally throwing the cigarette stubble on the ground. “I was thinking it might be that. Listen, I appreciate you not wanting me to go but the simple fact of the matter is that I'm simply past my best before date if you know what I mean.”

“I'm afraid I don't, sir.” Jackie scoffed, crossing her arms in front of her chest. She wasn't sure whether she was doing it because she was trying to pout or because the cold was starting to get at her.

“Oh I think you do.” He said stuffing his hands into the pockets of his flight jacket. “And I know how you're feeling.”

“Do you really?” She said averting her gaze to the ground. “Do you really know the feeling of someone you look up to just leaving and handing over a position of power and authority as if it was nothing?”

For a moment, he just looked at her, his face stiffening into an expression of grim uncertainty.  
Jackie had very rarely seen him put on that face and when he did so, it meant things were getting serious. The last time she'd seen him like that was when second lieutenant Gibs nearly strafed a friendly nuclear submarine because his IFF receiver was on the fritz.

“Jackie,” He began to speak, his expression not changing even a little. “You and me both know, every member of this squadron loves to fly. We're all born to be in the sky. That's what we feel destiny had in store for us. But sadly what we feel that we were destined to do and what reality permits us to do are two very different things. And the truth of the matter is: I am getting too old to ride a fighter. It's sad but it's true. So, before the top brass decided they didn’t want my senile ass on the team anymore, I figured I’d ruin their fun and resign before they could kick me out.”

Eerie silence hung over the pair as he finished speaking. This was one of the rare situations where Jackie was completely and utterly speechless. She had nothing to add and nothing to dispute what he just said. She slowly lifted her gaze off the ground and looked him in the eyes. He looked sad, hurt even. She now just realized that he'd been putting on an act ever since he resigned in front of the base commander.  
“Sir, I'm sorry.” She muttered, knowing that she might have overstepped some boundaries. “I didn't mean to be insolent. It's just that I don't think I'm ready to be flight lead.”

Again there was a brief period of silence as he mustered his students' facial expression. Then his lips curled up into a distinctly smug smile. “I think you are. If I didn't I wouldn't be going. I mean I taught you everything I know and you've flown as my number 2 for long enough to know how everything operates. Not to mention your pending promotion.”

“Oh yeah I forgot about that.” Jackie muttered coolly, scratching the back of her head. “Guess it's just a gimmick of being flight lead, isn't it.”

Peters reached into his pocket to pull out his pack of cigarettes. “It's more than that really. With the rank of captain you obtain an air of authority. It means that in the air, you're the one who runs the show. And to be perfectly honest, out of the three of you, I think you're the most capable of the bunch. I mean Finch is an excellent flier, but he lacks the intuition you have. And Gibs...”  
He said as he lit his cigarette “Gibs is certainly good at shooting things. But giving orders isn't his strong suit. Not to mention that his little endevour with the OFS Ardent still hinders his promotion to first lieutenant.”

He drew a long breath, exhaling the plume of smoke into the night sky. “Or to put it simply: You can do this.”

Jackie winced slightly. “Do you really think?” His smile grew even wider. “Alright if you still don't believe me, let me phrase that differently.” Peters said before clearing his throat and lowering his voice to his 'drill-instructor' voice. “First lieutenant Jacklyn Reiges. I order you to take over my position as flight lead of Husky flight. I expect you to carry out this duty with the utmost thoroughness and resolve. Failure will not be tolerated. Is that understood?” He barked. She new he wasn't being entirely serious. Or was he?

Anyway, to play along Jackie stood at attention, gave Peters a firm salute and answered with a crisp.  
“Sir, yes sir!”

He chuckled slightly while lazily returning the salute. “Alright then. Dismissed. You'll need some rest for your first three-ship patrol tomorrow. I also need to head out soon. I wanna get out of here before the morning comes.” With that, he turned around and prepared to leave.

Just as he was about to walk away, Jackie spoke up again. “Sir, before you go-”  
He stopped dead in his tracks but didn't turn around. “What is it, Reiges.”

“Thank you for everything.”

“No problem, kid.” he muttered as he picked up his pace again, slightly faster this time. She wasn't quite sure at the time but she imagined she heard his voice crack a little. But she quickly put it off as her imagination. As she watched her mentor cross the frozen airstrip and enter the dimly lit barracks, she still couldn't help but wonder what the future had in store for her.

There was one thing she did know for sure though and that was that she couldn't feel her feet anymore and probably needed a hot shower after being in the cold for so long.


	2. 'Contact 040 for 60'

Sleep didn't come easy for Jackie this night. She kept seeing captain Peters' face as he turned around to leave. She just couldn't rest. So it came to no surprise that when the alarm clock began shrieking at 6 am, she wasn't in the best of moods.

She lazily got out of her bunk and gave the alarm a firm slap across the top of its case to silence it.Something felt different today. She let her gaze wander around her usually so familiar room.  
Usually, the strewn about magazines mixed with documents of varying descriptions and the pile of dirty laundry in the far corner wouldn't have been a strange sight to her since she by nature wasn't a very organized person.

But something was different today. She turned around to look at herself in the mirror.  
“Good morning, Captain.” she muttered sarcastically. It had to be her imagination that everything seemed just a little bit grayer today. Her normally ice blue eyes seemed more gray than anything and so did her chestnut brown hair.

“This just isn't right.” Jackie muttered as she tore her eyes away from her reflection to open her wardrobe. And there it was. Her new uniform. Still wrapped in the plastic bag it came in. Up until now she thought it was just another gimmick of her upcoming promotion, but now that she actually gotten promoted it felt out of place. Reluctantly she took the olive green uniform out of the wardrobe and opened the plastic bag. “Guess there's no helping it then”.  
The rest of her morning was rather uneventful. She brushed her teeth, tied her hair back to her usual ponytail, grabbed her olive jacket and went to the mess hall. On her way out of the women's' barracks she passed a two engineers of the technical staff, who greeted her with a crisp salute and a “Good morning, Captain”.

Captain. It would take a while before she got used to that. She returned the salute while passing the two and made her way out of the barracks. Upon opening the door she felt a sudden gust of freezing cold her hitting her like a ton of bricks. Shivering she turned to look at the thermometer which was mounted in the doorframe.“Minus four degrees celcius.” She mused as she looked away from the thermometer and scanned the surrounding airfield. 

Kiers End may be the second largest airfield in the whole country, but that didn't necessarily mean it was big by international standards. In total there were three large hangars on the opposite side of the two main runways, which housed all the bases planes.  
The men's barracks and operations buildings including the tower were situated just to the left of the womens barracks.

While she didn't exactly find the cold whether pleasing, she wasn't exactly bothered by it either, seeing how she grew up in this sort of climate. Cayenne was, after all, the country closest to the south pole.Swiftly zipping her jacket shut over her uniform and burying her hands inside her pockets, she made her way over to the main operations building, which also contained the mess hall and general meeting areas for the flight personnel.

She opened the door to the gray cement structure and was immediately greeted by a jet of warm air. Switching between the blistering cold of the outside and the gentle caress of the heated building was still one of her favorite moments of the day, even after several years of service at this base.

Even though the control building didn't look inviting from the outside, the inside was specifically furnished to make the staff feel as comfortable as possible:  
The walls were plastered in a pine green wallpaper, which stood in contrast to the pastel colored laminate floors. The smell of coffee and printer ink filled the air as Jackie strode along these ever so familiar corridors. The troubles on her mind nearly wiped blank by this familiar feeling of warm anticipation. Just a couple more minutes and she would receive her orders for the day. Then she could hit the sky and escape this mess. Or at least what her mind perceived as mess. At any rate she just wanted to get her mind off of things for now and she knew that flying would do the trick.

Rounding the last corner, she finally arrived at the briefing room. Even through the closed double-doors she could hear what would seem like a heated argument to an outside observer. To Jackie, however, this was just a sign that her two squad-mates were already waiting for her inside, probably passing the time with some banter.

She pulled the doors open and was greeted by the familiar picture of first lieutenant David Finch trying to read through some of his aircrafts' maintenance reports, while second lieutenant Sheldon Gibs was standing opposite of him, his face seemingly locked in a state bewildered worry. Jackie only knew this look too well. From the look on Gibs' face alone she could deduce that he was either complaining about the lack of french fries in the mess hall lately, or that he had come up with another one of his stupid conspiracy theories.

Gibs, who had been rambling on in his usual tone to Finch froze in his tracks as he noticed Jackie entering the room. But before he could say anything finch looked up from his clipboard to meet his flight leads' gaze. “Another conspiracy theory?” Jackie snorted, clearly amused. She had walked in on this exact situation too many times for it to bother her. In fact, it reassured her. It gave her the feeling that even though some things might change, that these two would always be the same.

Before Finch could answer her question, Gibs piped up again in his usual excited manner. “Listen, Jackie, this is THE revelation of the century!”  
“What is?” She asked, half sarcastically, while trying to recount how many times she had hear him say this exact phrase over the years.

This time Finch cut in before Gibs could answer. “He thinks our government has been undermined by the Aurelians.” He said in his usual dry demeanor. Jackie couldn't help but hold back a laugh. This was far fetched, even for a passionate conspiracy theorist like Gibs.

“But it has! If you look at the bigger picture it all makes sense:” he followed up, his voice still practically foaming with excitement. “First of all, foreign relations with Aurelia have been on a downwards slope ever since the last war. And then there is these recent budget cuts for the military in Cayenne. And if you two had followed the news, you'd know that the Aurelian government has invested quite heavily into their military over the last couple of years. Personally, I think they're plotting something. And whatever it is, it isn't good for Cayenne.” he finished, looking quite pleased with himself.

Jackie sighed. “Gibs, if only you'd devote that much energy to studying you briefing papers or aircraft documentation, you'd be CO of this base by now.”  
“Oh come on guys, I'm serious!” Gibs went on but was cut short by the actual commanding officer of the base, commader Townsley, entering the briefing room.  
Much like Jackie, he too was accustomed to the commotion surrounding the three pilots whenever Gibs had come up with a new theory, so he payed not much mind to this and assumed his usual position in front of the whiteboard mounted on the far side of the room.  
“Everyone please have a seat. We've got a full schedule today, so I'd like to get this briefing over as quickly as possible.” He stated in his usual authoritarian tone, with his arms crossed in front of his chest.

The three pilots made their way to the first row of seats. The briefing room, much like any other building on this base, had been designed to house at least ten times the number of people that were currently present and so about two dozen other chairs stood dormant either stacked in the corner of the room, or listlessly arranged behind the front row.

As the three pilots got seated in their usual chairs, Townsley began the morning briefing.  
“Alright, Husky squad. As all of you know, today will mark a big change in your operation schedule . Starting today, Reiges will be the flight lead, Finch will fly as her wingman and Gibs will fly as the trailing plane. Does anyone here have any objections to that?” he asked, glancing upon the members of Husky squad in front of him. Everyone in the room knew there were no objections to be made. It was the most logical conclusion that everyone would just move up a spot. The only one who might have said something against Jackie becoming the flight lead was Jackie herself. And she didn't want to bother her squad-mates with her emotional problems. In fact she wanted him to get on with it already so she could take to the skies for the day.

“Alright, since there seem to be no objections, I will move on to the actual briefing itself.”

“Finally!” Jackie mused in the back of her mind, getting more excited for no reason in particular.

“Your flightplan for today is nothing so far out of the ordinary. You are to depart Kiers End to the north-west and then commence patrolling the coastal waters heading dues east. Again, any question?”

The three pilots of Husky squad remained silent again. “If there's nothing else that needs discussing, you're dismissed. You'll be departing for your patrol flight in fifteen minutes, so get ready.”

With that said, Husky squad arose from their seats almost in unison and went for the locker rooms which were on the other side of the hallway connecting the mess hall with the briefing room.

Jackie entered the women's' locker room and flicked on the lights. The old light bulbs took a couple of moments to brighten up and illuminate that small, white-tiled room. Both sides of the locker room were lined with lockers, with a long bench stretching out in the middle between them.  
Jackie went for her locker, which was the last in line and opened it. On the inside of the door, she had pinned several photos and other trinkets. One image in particular caught her mind today:

It was her and captain Peters standing in front of an F-18 Hornet. “That day.” She mused, thinking back to when the picture was taken. It was taken right after her first flight in the Hornet. Still, the memories of that day were embedded deep in her mind as some of her proudest memories. 

After all, the F-18 was Cayennes number one fighter aircraft and only few pilots were lucky enough to be able to get their hands on one. All in all the airforce of Cayenne was a wild mixture of all kinds of different aircraft of varying ages, ranging from relatively recent to almost antiquated

She glanced at the photo for a couple of moments, trying to relive it in her head. But still the thought that her mentor had resigned like it wasn’t a big deal was pestering her.

Tearing her gaze away from the inside of the locker door, she reached inside it to retrieve her gear. Her flight helmet and her g-suit, which would help against the enormous centrifugal forces that acted on a pilots body during flight.

Putting her gear on had become a routine so embedded into her mind, she had a habit of spacing out while doing it. She tried reviewing what commander Townsley had told them in the briefing room, but her thoughts kept snapping back.

“Alright, this needs to stop.” She mumbled, as she exasperatedly zipped her g-suit shut and grabbed her helmet. “I need to focus. I can try to work this out later, but for now I need to get my shit together and do my job. That's what he resigned for after all.” She exited through the back door of the locker room, which led to the ready-room where her squad-mates were already waiting for them.

“Looking good captain.” Finch joked, feigning a salute towards Jackie. She still needed time to get used to people calling her captain. “Zip it, Finch, you know I'm still not comfortable with all of this.”

“I know but you're going to have to get used to it sooner rather than later. This is the military and not a kindergarten.” Finch retorted.

“Are you sure about that?” She chuckled, gesturing towards Gibs, who was rocking back and forth in his chair. This was an antic of his, both of them knew too well. He, as both of them, was antsy to finally get airborne. Gibs ignored their banter and tried going through the documentation on his knee-board.

Upon noticing this, Jackie remembered that she hadn't retrieved hers yet. She walked over to the counter where the flight dispatcher had already laid it out for her. She picked it up and flipped through the pages. The first page had general information about weather and radio frequencies required for the flight. Spotting nothing too out of the ordinary, she flicked to the second page which simply displayed the flightplan that the commander had briefed them on earlier. The third and last page showed aircraft parameters such as fuel- and payload. Having glanced over every page briefly, she fixed the knee-board on the specified mount on her flight suit so she could review it in flight.

“All set?” She asked her two wingmen. Finch and Gibs simply nodded in return and rose from their seats. With that all of them made their way out of the door and onto the tarmac. The wind had picked up a bit in the time they had spent inside and there was some light clouds forming, but that was nothing the briefing papers didn't mention.

The squads' F-18 Hornets were all three lined up on their respective parking positions and being tended to by the bases' ground crew. Upon approaching their aircraft, the three pilots were greeted by the crew chief, Harris.

He was a scruffy looking old man, with a badly kept hairstyle and beard which had both turned into a mottled gray over the years. “Good morning Husky squad. Your machines are filled up and good to roll.” He exclaimed proudly.

“Thank you Harris.” Jackie chimed with a sweet smile. Although Harries could be all over the place sometimes, he still got along pretty well with Husky squad. As he should because it was his responsibility to keep their and all other aircraft on the base in good shape.

The three pilots separated and headed for their individual planes. They each walked around their aircraft for their pre-flight checks. This was to double check there was nothing wrong with the aircraft and to check if the ground crew had made any mistakes.

None of them found any issues with their aircraft, so they climbed into the pilot seats of their machines to begin the takeoff procedures. Skillfully flicking on the required switches, Jackie first brought the electrics of the aircraft online and then tuned to the right radio frequency that the briefing papers indicated.

Pressing the mic-switch on the throttle lever she called out to her flight. “Husky 1-1, radio check.” A few seconds later she heard Finch pipe up. “Husky 1-2, good check.” Another couple of seconds later Gibs joined in. “Husky 1-3, good check.” 

With their radios checked the squad got permission from the tower to start their engines. Upon receiving permission the three of them closed their canopies and began to start the turbine engines. With a light humming, the aircraft's' auxiliary power units came to live and began to spool up the main turbines, almost in perfect unison.

The humming soon grew into a deep rumbling as theHornets engines began awakening fully. Watching the gauges inside her cockpit, Jackie was on the lookout for any discrepancies with the engines. As the engines finished spooling up, Jackie called the tower again. “Kiers Tower, Husky 1-1, request permission to taxi to runway 35.”  
The air traffic controller responded almost instantly. “Kiers Tower, Husky 1-1, you are cleared to taxi to runway 35.” Jackie looked around one last time to check if all of the ground crew had stepped aside, before slightly advancing the throttle to make her aircraft roll forward. She turned right and rolled past Finch, who fell in line after her as she passed. “1-2, Rolling.” He announced as he did so.

Gibs was last in line but he too dutifully announced that he had fallen in with his two squad-mates with a cheery “1-3, Rolling.” The trio of Hornets slowly rolled towards their designated runway and halted before entering. They had to wait for the tower to give them permission to enter first, then they'd be good to go. Jackie took the moment while waiting to glance around the outside.

Apart from the plowed runways and taxiways, the base was covered in a moderate layer of snow. The light of the morning sun refracted from the white coat to make it shimmer like a sea of a million crystals. Ever since she had been a child she had loved the snow. Letting her gaze stray back inside the cockpit she glanced upon the rearview mirror, which was worked into the upper portion of the canopy frame.

In it, she saw the reflection of Finch and his F-18. He seemed to be going over his checklist, his head craned downwards into the instrument panel. She tried to get a glimpse of Gibs, but the combined heat flare from both her and Finches' Flankers left Husky 1-3 as a blurred blue/gray silhouette in her mirror.

After her eyes turned away from the mirror and down into her own instrument panel. While waiting for the tower to give them clearance, she might as well go over the gauges one more time.

“Fuel level, check. Airbrake, Check. Engine RPM, Check and...” She mumbled to herself as she glanced over the various gauges and switches, making sure they were each met the parameters for takeoff. “Standby ADI...” She suddenly broke off as she glanced towards the instrument in question. The secondary artificial horizon was one of the backup instruments that needed to be manually turned on with each startup. A basic step in her checklist she simply forgot.

“Gee, I get it brain, you're not in the best of conditions at the moment but get it together.”  
She murmured while turning on the ADI with her left hand while simultaneously knocking on her black and white flight helmet in a mocking manner with her right hand.

No sooner had she set up the rouge instrument, the speaker inside her helmet crackled to life again, conveying the voice of the air traffic controller giving them permission to enter the runway and take off.

“Roger that, Kiers Tower. Husky Squad taking the active.” She responded automatically as if she'd had this conversation a million times before. In reality she had only ever listened while captain Peters did the talking. It must have just imprinted into her memory on its own after countless times of hearing it.  
The three planes now entered the runway and positioned themselves in a triangular formation with Jackie in the lead, Finch on the right and Gibs on the left.

“Alright Gentlemen, check your instruments and get ready for takeoff.” Jackie called with an authoritarian tone in her voice. Seconds later, Finch and Gibs called in and gave the signal they were ready.

 

The pilots slowly increased the throttle of their machines simultaneously to the point where the wheel brakes were just enough to hold the roaring jets in place. The combined heat flare from the six jet engines left the world behind them in a washed out blur. 

“Ready brakes. Release.” Jackie instructed over the radio. The three aircraft lurched forward in unison as Husky squad released the brakes. 

The three Flankers raced down the runway, the roar of their engines shaking the ground.  
In the lead plane, Jackie was monitoring her instruments while keeping the aircraft on a straight path down the runway. 

After hurtling down the runway, Husky squad took off, expertly maintaining formation.  
Jackie made all the relevant calls to the tower, announcing their departure heading and planned altitude. The ATC answered with a short “Kiers Tower, Husky Flight, copy that, have a nice flight.”

After climbing up to their patrolling altitude and making sure all their instruments were reading what they were supposed to read, the three-ship flight of F-18s was pretty much set up for a long and usually uneventful patrol.

A few minutes went by in which the pilots simply focused on flying their planes and maintaining formation as well as scanning the horizon for any surprise visitors. This though, became pretty dull to all three of them after the while and soon their usual banter ensued with Jackie being the first to break radio silence.

“So, Gibs, mind telling me what you were on about earlier? That whole “Aurelia is trying to start a war with us” business?” Before Gibs could reply to her, Finch piped up with a snarky “Since when are you buying into conspiracy theories, Captain?”

“Guys it's not just a conspiracy theory! I tell you ever since Cayenne declared independence from Aurelia thirty years ago, they've been underhandedly trying to escalate this cold war state! Not to mention that their current prime minister keeps making speeches about “restoring the grace and beauty of Aurelia.” This guy means trouble!”

Jackie chuckled into her radio “And so naturally you think he's gone ahead and undermined our government to sneakily prepare for an invasion or something.”

“Exactly!” Gibs yelled into the microphone. He wanted to add something but was cut off by Finch, who at this point had listened to this exact speech for the second time today. “Are you just gonna leave out the fact that there is no way in hell they could gear up for a war without anyone noticing”

“That's what they want you to think! They’re making statements that their military is at full capacity as it is, but we have no way of verifying that information do we? Have you seen those insane bunker systems they have installed into their mountain ranges? They might as well have twice the number of troops that we actually think they have.”

After pondering what Gibs had just shouted over the radio in his usual excited manner, Finch spoke up again, this time addressing his flight lead “What do you think, Jackie.”

“You know what, this sounds frustratingly sane for some that Gibs uttered.” She mused after short consideration. “After all it's not old news that Aurelia has always had aspirations to reclaim Cayenne as a colony.”

“You're not actually buying this stuff, are you?” Finch retorted in a shocked manner. Jacky promptly defused her statement by adding “Not really, but at least it sounds more plausible than some of the other stuff that he's come up with over the years.”

“Roger that.” Finch laughed in agreement.  
Gibs wanted to complain to his squad-mates that they weren't taking him seriously again and that this was a matter of utmost importance, but he was cut short by a radio call from Kier Ends' early warning radar station, callsign Darkstar.

“Darkstar, Husky flight, contact BRA 040 for 60 at 25,000, flanking. Target is an Airliner whose crew has ceased all communications and remains unresponsive. Exercise caution. Target ID is RAA-708.” The ground controllers voice sounded incredibly tense for some reason.

An unresponsive airliner wasn't that much out of the ordinary. Usually it was just their radios going haywire or the crew tuning into the wrong frequency. Putting on her best 'Flight Lead Voice' she pressed the mic-switch and responded. “Husky Flight, Darkstar, Affirmative, moving to intercept.”

With that she put her aircraft into an easy right hand turn to match the heading indicated by the previous BRA, or Bearing, Range, Altitude, call. Finch and Gibs followed suit, not breaking formation. Though their target was quite a ways away, none of the pilots felt up for any more banter or conspiracy theories. The whole atmosphere had suddenly tensed up almost unbearably. They flew for about two minutes like this, their target inching ever closer.

“This isn’t anything you haven’t seen before, just stay calm.”

Jackie, trying not to sound nervous, instructed her two wingmen to go “Music on”, which meant to turn their radars on to try and spot the rouge airliner. The pilots began falling into their trained rhythm of glancing at the radar screen and scanning the horizon.  
Two more minutes of silent searching passed until Finch finally broke the silence “Tally visual! Target tracking north to south just off our two o'clock.”

It took the other two members of Husky squad a second to spot the wisp of the contrail that heralding the position of their intercept target. Leading on Jackie put her plane into a slow right hand bank to come up behind the target. She finally managed to acquire the airliner on radar as well.

“I got him locked up, he's still about twenty miles out.”

 

What struck her as increasingly odd was that the plane in front of her seemed to be descending at a steady rate. As she drew closer and closer she could begin to make out more details about the plane in general. It was a Tu-154 Tri-Jet, that, along with the usual white contrails was trailing some kind of black smoke.

Now that they were only a couple hundred yards away from their target, Jackie began issuing orders to her wingmen. “Gibs, check the aircraft for any superficial damage, Finch come with me. We'll take a look up front and see what the pilots of this thing are up to.”

“3-1, copy.” Gibs responded in an uncharacteristically professional manner. He broke formation and made his way around the airliner to scan for the source of the black smoke that was coming out of the right side of the fuselage. Jackie and Finch made their way along the left side of the plane and tried to peer into the passenger cabin.

It seemed to be completely deserted, with the windows in the aft section of the cabin visibly fogged over. “Seems like they suffered a drastic loss of cabin pressure.” Finch remarked to his flight lead. 

“Does seem like it yeah. But they don't seem to be carrying anyone at the moment so I wonder what might have caused that.” 

To her surprise Gibs had a prompt answer for her. “1-1, I think I just found out what caused it! The right hand side passenger door is completely blown out.”

A lump began to form in Jackies' throat. This was bad. Real bad. Her heart began pounding faster and faster as she and Finch inched their way ever closer to the cockpit section. She almost dreaded to find out what awaited her there. Would the two pilots be okay? Did the explosion on board only knock out the radio antenna? Or did something more drastic happen to the crew of the damaged airliner next to her.

She was about to acknowledge the information that Gibs had just transmitted to her, when he piped up again, this time sound clearly more shocked than before. “Oh damn I just found out why Darkstar sounded so agitated. This is plane belongs to the Royal Aurelian Airforce!”  
“Come again?” Finch gawked, his usually cool demeanor faltering for a second. “Are you absolutely sure?”  
“I am! Hell, it's written out right here in large bold letters along the fuselage!” 

The lump in Jackies throat grew bigger. This situation just grew from bad to potentially catastrophic.

Finally, Husky 1-1 and 1-2 reached the Cockpit of the Tu. Much to Jackies relief they were quickly able to make out movement inside the cockpit. But the person inside seemed to be alone and also didn't seem to be wearing a pilots uniform. From what Jackie could make out, the person seemed to be female and about the same age as her, though details at this range were a bit hazy. Her head was frantically darting between the instrument panel and the right hand console. It became pretty clear to Jackie and Finch that the person inside the cockpit was not a pilot.

“RAA-708, come in.” Jackie spoke up, trying to raise the airliner on radio as was standard procedure during an intercept. The girl inside the cockpit hadn't even noticed the two fighter jets that had crept up to the left side of her cockpit.

“RAA-708, you have been intercepted by three fighters of the Cayenne Airforce. Please follow our instructions and turn heading 210. Non compliance will lead to termination. Do you copy?” Jackie tried again, this time sounding audibly nervous. 

Her voice had begun to crack a little during this part. She needed to get this girls attention somehow or else she and her wingmen would have to shoot her down! But still, the girl was too with the middle console to even notice they were there and she obviously couldn't hear her either. That's when she got an idea.

“Finch, light the burner and cut across right in front of her nose. That ought to get her attention.” He promptly complied, pushing his Hornets throttle to the maximum. The F-18s engines roared as the aircraft rocketed forward. Making sure to to be as visible as possible, Finch broke hard and cut from left to right, right in front of the Tupolews windshield. The thundering of the fighter jet finally tore the girl away from the instrument panel and caused her to hectically look around her.

As she spotted Jackie, still flying about thirty yards away from her left hand side, a terrified look stretched over her face. Jackie felt a pang of empathy for the girl. So far she could only imagine the situation this person was in and now seeing a fighter jet, fully loaded with missiles and unclear intentions flying next to you must be horrifying.

Finch having finished his thundering maneuver had meanwhile circled around and slotted back in on Jackie's left wing, which only added to the horror on the girls face. “I think we scared her.” Finch mused.

Jackie tried one more time, this time with the girl seeing them clearly, to call her. “RAA-708, do you copy?” After some time of staring at the two planes, finally seemed to snap out of it and motioned to the headset she was wearing, with a quizzical, almost helpless expression on her face.  
“I think she's on the wrong frequency.” Finch noted having seen the whole thing unfold. 

“Well then, let's see if we can get her to tune into the right one.” Even though it hardly seemed like the girl in the Tupolew was able to handle the situation, she had noticed them and her fiddling with the console was probably her trying to get the radio to work so she could call for help. 

“We can do this.” Jackie mumbled to herself, bringing her plane close to the damaged airliner. Her wingtip was now only a couple of yards away from the other planes fuselage. This was a very delicate situation, but she needed to make absolutely sure she got the information across. Taking her left hand off the throttle she brought it up as close to the canopy as she could and began signaling her radio frequency.

'2-5-5-0-0-0'

“Please work, please work, please work.” she was chanting to herself. After a couple of seconds of dumbfound staring the girl nodded and mirrored the hand signals that Jackie had just made. Somewhat relieved, she gave the girl a thumbs-up. She could see how the girl turned around again and dialed the numbers into the radio, and pressed the mic-switch. Though Jackie could see her lips moving, her radio refused to convey the girls voice, who was now looking at her again, with a somewhat hopeful expression.

 

It almost broke Jackie's heart to have to shake her head, as a signal that she didn't hear anything. She thought harder. “What else might be... AH!” she got another idea. Again, she took her left hand off the throttle, but this time, she wrote letters into the air. Making sure they were mirrored on her side, so that the girl could read them correctly, she signed 'T/R' into the air. Her troubleshooting approach this time was, that she probably hadn’t dialed the radio to the Transmit/Receive mode

Looking at her again, the girl did as she was shown.  
Silently, Jackie hoped that the girl could find the switch she meant. Once again she turned to inspect the radio. Seconds passed that in Jackies mind felt like hours. This had to work. She was out of ideas as to what she could do to contact her via radio.

And without voice communication, trying to guide her down safely would most likely proof to be a futile task. Finally, she turned around again and looked at Jackie. She pressed down on the mic-switch again and finally the speakers in Jackies helmet conveyed a weak “H-hello? Can you hear me?”

She sounded terrified and exhausted, but Jackie was relieved nonetheless. “Roger, I hear you.” She proudly proclaimed, finally having regained her composure enough to mock up a hot-shot fighter pilot tone. On the other end of the line the girl seemed visibly relieved as well. “Thank goodness you're here. I need help, the pilots, they're-” she trailed off looking for the right words. “I think they're dead.”  
“Good lord.” Muttered Gibs over radio. While Jackie had tried to get the girl to set up her radio right, he had crept up to the right hand side of the cockpit. Jackie took a deep breath. She mustn't sound sound nervous now. She had to sound like she knew what she was doing.

“Copy that. Do you mind telling me your name?” 

“K-Kara. My name is Kara.” She answered shakily

“Right Kara, my name is Jackie. The guy just of my wing is Finch and the one to your right is Gibs. We're gonna try to get you down to earth safely.”

A meek “Thank you” came as a respone from the terrified girl. Now that Jackie was able to contact her, she decided to relay the situation to the ground control in Kiers End.

“Husky 1-1, Darkstar, we managed to contact the rouge airliner. It appears that both pilots are dead and the plane is currently being flown by a passenger. Declaring an emergency and request vectors for approach to runway 17.”

It took the ground controller a couple of seconds to reply but he finally came back with instructions for further procedures. “Darkstar copies, Husky 1-1. Turn heading 225 for 40 miles descend to 15000 feet. Say souls and remaining pounds of fuel on board RAA-708.”

“Husky 1-1 affirmative, turning 225 for 40. Standby.” Jackie replied, flicking her radio back to the frequency where Kara was anxiously awaiting instructions.  
“Kara, are you still there?” 

“Yes, I am.” came the reply. This time she sounded a little less anxious. The thought that help had arrived and they were gonna guide her down was somewhat comforting to her.

“Good. Now listen closely. What I want you to do first is tell me how many people are on board with you.” A couple of seconds passed before the radio crackled to live again. 

“I- I had one of my staff members with me but he went to the back and then there was this bang and I-.” She cut herself off, noticing she was beginning to ramble. “It's just me left I think.”

Jackie swallowed. This must be taking a toll on Kara. She took another deep breath. “Be professional, this girl needs you” she thought to herself. “Copy that. Now I want you to look for the fuel gauge. It should be labeled 'Fuel QTY' or something like that. Can you do that for me?”

“One second.” Kara replied leaning down to scan the instruments. Another awfully long couple of seconds passed when she came on the radio again. “I found it!” she exclaimed exitedly. “It reads ten thousand on the left side and seven thousand on the right side. So seventeen thousand in total.”

 

“Good Kara, you're doing great.” Said Jackie reassuringly. She called Darkstar again to relay the information that Kara had just submitted to her and asked for further instructions.  
Darkstar acknowledged what Jackie had told them and told her to guide Kara along the heading that she had received earlier.

“Okay Kara, we organized a nice big landing strip for you to put this bird down on. Now all we need to do is get you there.” 

“I don't know if I can-” She muttered nervously, obviously overwhelmed by what was happening around her.

“Of course you can! That's what we're here for, after all.” Jackie chimed, trying to sound as confident as she could, still hoping Kara wouldn't see through her facade. “Now let's start with something easy. We're going to do a simple right hand turn, to a heading of 225. Simply roll the aircraft a bit to the right with the control column in front of you and gently pull it towards you. We'll follow you, okay?”

Again, silence. Under her oxygen mask, Jackie was biting her lower lip anxiously awaiting Karas' reply. A few seconds later, the salvation finally came with another week “Okay, I'll try.”  
As soon as she finished speaking the left wing of the aircraft began to rise ever so  
slightly until it the plane was maintaining a twenty degree bank. 

It soon started turning gently to the instructed bearing. “You're doing great, Kara.” reassured Jackie who was following her closely. Upon reaching the right bearing she instructed Kara to level out the airplane again and begin descending. She dutifully did as instructed by the fighter pilot flying next to her and soon enough she had descended to the altitude that Darkstar had assigned to them. 

A couple of minutes of flying passed filled with sporadic praises from Jackie, about how Kara was doing well and she had the situation under control. 

That was until Kara frantically picked up the radio again and screeched “The Master Caution button has started beeping, it's so loud what do I do?” There was that lump forming in Jackies throat again. “It's okay, just press the button to silence it. Then take a look at the warning panel on your left and tell me what it reads.” She instructed trying to brush aside the fact that this could mean all sorts of problems.

“It says 'R-Engine RPM'. What does that mean?” She asked obviously nervous at the planes cryptic way of telling her that something was amiss. Jackie thought about this for a moment, going over the procedure for if this was to happen in her aircraft. “Can you tell me what the fuel gauge reads again?” She inquired, that by now familiar feeling of dreading the reply sneaking up on her again.

After the usual delay that Kara needed to read the gauges and formulate a reply she answered “The left tank reads 7000 and the right one 0.” 

This sent Jackie into high alert. The door must have damaged one of the fuel lines as it got blown off the aircraft. The right tank had completely drained causing the right engine to flame out.

This wasn't good.

The Tupolew already began slowing down. While the plane could go just fine on two engines, it would mean that the plane was flying on asymmetrical thrust, favoring the left side. This would make it hard for an experienced pilot to land a plane much less someone who has both under shock and completely inexperienced.

“Jackie what does this mean?” Kara probed, trying to sound not too nervous. It was almost as if she was trying to mirror Jackie's professional demeanor. “Standby I need to check something” Jackie dismissed quickly while flicking the radio over to her flights channel. “Guys, her right engine's flamed out how do I explain this to her without having her enter a frenzy?”

“How 'bout you try to tell her it shouldn't matter that much, cause that's pretty much how I see it.”Gibs answered, sounding a bit less convinced about his own answer than he probably should have been, considering the circumstances.

“Yeah you say that but try telling someone who's never flown a plane that she's lost an engine. She's gonna be absolutely ballistic over this! We need her to be as calm as possible so she has any chance of sticking the landing.”

“How about we don’t tell her at all. As you said she’s never flown an airplane before. Just BS something about that explosion that ripped the door of the plane doing something to the engine.” Finch suggested.

“Roger that.” She acknowledged, flicking the radio back to talk to Kara again. “It shouldn't be that big of an issue, it just means you have lost some thrust due to one fuel tank being low.” she was silently hoping that Kara wouldn't be able to see through this thinly disguised lie. If she did this might spell disaster for her.

Kara came back on air, this time sounding a little more relaxed. “Alright, I trust you.”  
Thankful that their little lie had gone unnoticed, Husky squad was about to continue focusing purely on escorting this poor girl to safety, when the ground controllers voice crackled over their helmet radios again. 

“Darkstar, Husky flight, pop-up group, bearing 020, at angels 20. Move to intercept, targets possibly hostile.”

Jackies eyes widened in shock. This was the worst possible time for something like this. Kara needed someone to be by her side and get her down. Jackie couldn't leave her behind. And she wouldn't. She was about to answer Darkstar, when Finch interjected. 

“Darkstar, Husky 1-2, roger that moving to intercept.” followed shortly by Gibs. “1-3, moving to intercept.”

“Hey wait you guys, what are you-” Jackie gawked, but was cut off by her number two who simply said “Relax Captain, we got this. You focus on getting this girl down safely.”

After a few brief seconds of stunned silence, she finally managed to muster a reply.  
“Acknowledged, 1-2 and 1-3, move to intercept, 1-1 will continue to escort.”

Finch and Gibs banked away to the provided intercept course, with Finch taking the lead.  
The departure of the two fighter jets drew a puzzled “Where are they going?” from Kara.

 

Biting her lip again, Jackie once again saw herself forced to lie to her. “Ah they’re just continuing their patrol, since we’ve got this situation so well under control, don’t we?”  
Even she was surprised at how convincing that sounded.

“Right, yes we do.”She did sound more confident now and Jackie almost thought she could even make out a little bit of amusement in her voice.

While their flight lead was busy escorting the damaged airliner to safety, Husky 1-2 and 1-3 had pushed their planes into full afterburner and were racing to intercept. A loud ‘BANG’ heralded the planes’ break through the sound barrier. 

Darkstar had been providing the two pilots with steady information about the targets and their current heading and speed, so both of them roughly knew what to look for.

“Husky 1-3, Husky 1-2, arm hot.” Finch instructed his wingman. This was the command they used to order all pilots to arm their weapons systems. “1-3 Check.” Gibs responded and after a second added “You don’t think we’re gonna have to fight those guys, do you?”

“I hope not, but as things are now they’re not responding to Darkstar and they’re in full burner towards Jackie and that girl in the airliner and to be perfectly honest with you I’m not keen on finding out what they’re gonna do once they get there.”

Gibs wanted to reply something but before he could do so he spotted something off in the distance. “Tally on two contrials! One o’clock, about 1,5k above us and 20 miles out.”

Finch quickly acknowledged and began banking in straight towards them. The two unknown planes were closing at supersonic speeds so it would be a matter of seconds before they met. But before that would occur, Finch tried one more time to raise them on the radio.  
“Attention, unidentified planes. You have entered the defense perimeter of the Cayenne airforce.Turn north immediately to avoid-”

His sentence was cut short by a missile streaking in directly between him and Gibs. Luckily it failed to track and went harmlessly by to detonate several hundred feet behind them.  
Both pilots instinctively broke away to both sides and Finch frantically called the ground control back in Kiers End. “Darkstar, Husky 1-2, Contacts are hostile, I say again targets are hostile. They’re shooting at us!” 

“Roger that Husky 1-2, you are cleared to engage.” came the reply, this time almost instant.  
Acting more out of reflex rather than thought, both of them turned back hard to go head on with the enemy planes who were now clearly visible and still bearing down on them.

The four planes merged head on, canopy to canopy. For a split second it seemed if time stood still as the two pilots of Husky flight were directly opposite their unknown aggressors.  
They could, for a fraction of a second clearly make out their opponents. 

They flew MiG-21 Fishbeds, planes far older than theirs, but still capable in the hands of a good pilot. What both of them noticed immediately were the markings on the planes, or rather the lack thereof. Both of the MiGs were painted charcoal gray, with not even an airframe number visible.

The planes roared by each other, the sheer combined power of their engines shaking their airframes. Finch initiated a tight left turn to cut above Gibs and get on the tail of the trailing MiG in the enemy formation and Gibs did the exact opposite.

The MiGs didn’t break formation and turned in unison to engage Gibs. They too had now turned 180 degrees and were heading straight for Gibs again, firing their board cannons wildly at him. His training kicked in and he weaved his plane skillfully through the lethal hail of gunfire. But all this wild maneuvering prevented him from locking up either one of the enemy planes, so he couldn’t shoot back.

After they passed him again, the 21s performed a similar maneuver to what he and Finch had just done, only that they were splitting up to attack him from multiple angles, forcing him to evade further and further. While this was happening Finch had positioned himself above his wingman and was waiting for the perfect moment to strike. He knew that Gibs was easily able to keep dodging the gunfire. Though he could never tell this in person to him, he thought highly of his flying skill and respected him deeply as a pilot. In a situation like this you have to faith like that in your comrades.

The enemies had just passed Gibs by for a third time when one of them turned wide and presented a nice profile for Finch to pounce on. he rolled his plane inverted and dove on his enemy. He managed to nearly get within shooting distance before the MiG broke off of Gibs, likely having been warned by his radar warning receiver.

He began throwing his plane around frantically to deny Husky 1-2 a clean shot at him, but Finch kept his cool. As the MiG turned, weaved and bobbed in and out of his gunsight he kept his hand poised over the trigger, awaiting for the perfect moment to shoot.

After a series of increasingly more erratic maneuvers the MiG pilot had finally run out of options and energy. His plane had slowed down to near stall-speed and he no chance of evading Finch, who had expertly stayed on his tail the entire time.

With minimal effort, Husky 1-2 put his gun-piper over the floating MiG and pulled the trigger to unleash a short burst from his cannon. The rounds slammed into the stalling enemy, causing the engine to detonate, which ripped the back end clean off the 21.

Not eager to go down with his plane, the hostile pilot used his ejection seat to bail out of the wreck seconds before a second explosion, powered by the planes’ fuel tanks, flashed through the sky.

“Husky 1-2, Splash one!” He shouted gleefully over the radio, proudly announcing his first kill to his squad mates. A moment later Gibs’ voice crackled over the radio. “Congratulations, I’m still working on mine.”

Finch looked around to regain sight of his Wingman. Before long, he spotted Gibs, still entwined in a dogfight with the enemy MiG. They were still a bit higher than him and he could see them clearly dancing around each other, both sporadically firing cannon bursts at their opponent, as either momentarily blinked through the others gunsight.

The MiG pilot, despite flying in the older airplane, stood his ground against Gibs and his Hornet defiantly, drawing out every reserve his old fighter had left. “This guy knows what he’s doing.” Gibs coughed to himself, fighting against the g-force dragging his body into the seat of his airplane

Climbing up above the ongoing dogfight, Finch looked for an opening to slot in and help out his wingman. Suddenly Gibs came on over the radio again, sounding strained but determined. “Standby 1-2, I got this.”

Hesitating for a second Finch answered, still closely watching both Gibs and the MiG-21.  
“Roger that 1-3, standing by.”

The fight dragged on with the clearly more experienced MiG pilot slowly gaining the upper hand over Gibs. With each turn the two fighters bled speed and energy, driving the fight deeper and deeper down.

The strain put onto Gibs’ body by the constant pressure of g-forces was taking its toll.  
He was beginning to black out further and further with each winding turn, his focus was slipping more each time as well. 

He tried to keep up with his opponent as best he could, but the MiG just kept turning, denying him a clean shot with either missiles or his guns, always forcing Gibs to pull harder and further, bleeding off more of the Hornets energy.

Then suddenly, during another sharp right hand turn, the MiG suddenly rolled out and pulled vertical. Reacting a fraction of a second later, Husky 1-3 tried to follow the MiG. He yanked the stick of the Flanker back, the g-forces darkening his vision. 

But when Gibs relieved the pressure on the control column the MiG was nowhere to be seen. Pushing his plane back into the horizontal he began frantically looking around for his adversary. He had climbed about three thousand feet during the time he had the plane vertical, which cost him the last bit of energy he had left. His plane was near stall speed which made him a sitting duck for the MiG-21.

Finch had dutifully waited out the results of this dogfight up until this point, idly circling above the two planes. He knew that for Gibs this was a matter of pride and he would have probably asked him to do the same if their places were switched. But the fight had now reached a stage where even Finch, from about two thousand feet above, could see that Gibs was approaching his limits. 

“So, do you still ‘got this’ 1-2, or do you need help.” Finch asked, trying not to sound smug.

 

“No no, I’m fine. Though I would appreciate it if you could give me a clue to the whereabouts of this Fishbed.” Gibs’ ragged voice crackled over the comms.

“4 o’clock moving to 6. You might wanna do something about that.” Finch answered flatly, silently contemplating whether or not to step in and help his friend. This had gone past the point of letting him have his pride straight into standing by while your wingman gets shot down.

Rolling his Aircraft onto its back Gibs replied. “Right I know what you’re thinking, but lemme try one last thing.” He didn’t give Finch the time to reply as he pulled back on the stick and his Hornet began pitching downward. 

Finch's’ eyes went wide. The maneuver Gibs was trying to do is called a Split-S and usually required much more altitude than he currently had available. At this moment, Finch didn’t know what amazed him more as he watched, still flying in orbit above the two planes:  
The fact that Gibs was actually attempting something like that or that the MiG was actually following him. 

Gibs and his enemy began rocketing towards the ocean at break-neck speed, their throttles pushed all the way into the firewall. The altimeter in the Hornet ticked down in an alarming rate and his aircrafts’ board computer was yelling at him to “Pull up! Pull up!”

“1-3, Abort, Abort! You’re not gonna make it!” Finch screamed into the radio, watching as the F-18 and the MiG-21 screamed towards the sea. 1-3 had the stick buried in his stomach, forcing every last degree of pitch out of his shaking hornet. As the plane began to come around and rise its nose again, the oceans was so close it was easy to make out individual waves, even through the curtain of blackout closing around Gibs’ eyes.

Through the apex of the turn his body and plane were subjected to crushing g-forces. The warning beeps and shouts of his plane began to blur out as his consciousness slipped further, but still he kept his grip on the stick like a vice, forcing his plane through the maneuver. The F-18 groaned and creaked under the weight of the turn, it’s engines screaming in angry protest against the pull of the earth.

“BAIL GIBS!” Finch shouted, as the Hornet breached 300 feet, it’s nose still not pitched sufficiently up. He watched as his wingman plummeted towards the waves. He waited for the column of water that would herald the Hornets impact point.

At this moment time seemed to stop for Husky squad. Jackie, who wasn’t able to see the sheer insane maneuver that 1-3 was trying to pull off could only assume the worst. Especially with Finch screaming over the squadron channel like that, her mind kicked into high gear.

But there was no column. Instead finch saw a dense cloud of water vapor being thrown up, with Gibs’ F-18 rising from it almost vertically. Finch couldn’t believe his eyes. Before he had the chance to understand what had just transpired before him, the mig came hurtling past the stalling Hornet and slammed into the ocean. 

“1-3, come in.” Finch probed, still unsure if what he was seeing was indeed real. Only when Gibs came back on with a raspy “I told you, I got this.” did he understand that they had both survived . 

“Copy that 1-3.” Finch Chuckled dropping down to Gibs’ height so that both of them could form up again. “I really don’t know how you did that but please do me a favor and don’t do that again.”

“Gee you make it sound like you were worried about me.”

“1-2, 1-3, what just happened?” Jackie, whose mind had been going a mile a minute ever since her squad mates got into that dogfight, asked her professional facade breaking up.

“Engaged and destroyed two hostile targets of unknown origin captain.” Gibs responded, finally having caught his breath somewhat. The two victorious fighter pilots had already turned back and were heading back to finish escorting Kara. 

Jackie heaved a sigh of relief. “Roger that, fall back in line.” 

Noticing that her tough pilot act was failing miserably, she took a deep breath and tried to calm down. “She needs you Reiges.”

“Are you okay Jackie?” 

Jackie snapped out of her pep talk routine when Kara spoke up again. “Funny how she’s asking me if I’m okay now.” She mused under her oxygen mask.  
“Yeah I’m alright, just had to talk to my squad mates real quick. Sorry ‘bout that let’s get back to getting you down.”

While her two wingmen were engaged in combat, Jackie had managed to set Kara up for an approach straight down the runway, talking to her through the flurry of radio calls and her own anxious fear of the uncertain. They were now less than 50 miles away from the runway.

Jackie had already made the necessary arrangements with the tower to have the Runway cleared and all emergency vehicles standing by in case of a disaster. They could already see the faint spec on the northernmost tip of the Island nation of Cayenne that was Kiers End.

“Jackie, I don’t know if I can pull this off.” remarked Kara over the radio. She sounded nervous and exhausted. Jackie couldn’t even begin to imagine the toll this must be taking on her. 

Again, acting as tough and confident as she could muster, Jackie replied. “Come on you’ve made it this far and now it’s only a matter of putting this bird on the ground. I’m right here with you to walk you through everything.”

A moment passed before a shaky “Right, let’s do this.” came from Kara. Heaving a sigh of relief, Jackie slid her plane in front of Karas Tupolew. “Right, now listen closely, we’re gonna be landing in tandem. Just try to orient yourself on my plane.” She instructed.

“Alright, I’ll try.”

Jackie was aware that what she was doing was extremely dangerous, but she hoped that this would help Kara getting her plane oriented just right. She was also lucky that Kara seemed to be blissfully unaware that she had lost an engine and was probably going to run out of fuel very soon. Whatever they did, this landing had to stick.

 

Finch and Gibs were holding in formation at a distance to give both Jackie and Kara room to maneuver. “Do you think this is gonna end well?” Gibs radioed to his Wingman. 

“I don’t really want to jinx it to be honest, so let’s just have faith in the Captain.” Finch replied dryly.

The airbase at Kiers End had now clearly drawn into view and Jackie spoke up again, to talk Kara through the last steps of Landing. “Right, what you’re going to want to do now, is extend your landing flaps. That should be a blue lever somewhere on your right.”

Again a few seconds passed, in which the runway grew a bit bigger again. You could now begin to make out individual vehicles and planes on the tarmac, scurrying around, getting ready for the arrival of the damaged airliner.

“Got it.” The flaps on the aft side of her wings slowly unfolding. 

 

“Good, we’re going to enter the final approach soon. But beforehand I want you to locate the emergency wheel brake. It should be a red and white pull lever. As soon as your wheels touch the ground you’re going to yank on that as hard as you possibly can, understand?”

“Y-yes, I got that.” Kara replied, seemingly getting more anxious. Jackie radioed one last “You’re gonna be fine.” to her, before starting to take away the throttle and increasing the pitch of her plane. Kara mirrored the maneuver to the best of her abilities, the massive airliner wobbling from side to side slightly.

“Easy does it. Just back off the throttle and lift the nose a bit more then you’ll be golden.”  
Jackie instructed, trying to multitask between landing her own plane while keeping an eye on her trainee pilot through the rearview mirror, when suddenly one last important instruction sprang to her mind. “Oh and when I tell you to cut the throttle just pull both of the levers as far back as they will go. That will engage reverse thrust which will help with braking.”

Again, Kara responded to the best of her abilities. “Alright, Jackie.”  
From the ground, the crews of the emergency vehicles watched in tense anticipation as the two planes made their approach. Jackie's F-18 was steadily gliding in front of the Tu-154 while both planes were descending towards the tarmac.

They were only a couple of hundred feet away from touchdown when Karas voice suddenly crackles over the radio again. Jackie could hardly understand what she was saying because there was a deafening alert tone blaring through the cockpit of the damaged airliner.  
“Jackie, something is wrong!”

“Just ride it out, we’re almost there.” She instructed, still trying to keep the act up.

They were now right above the beginning of the runway. “Cut the throttle, now!” Jackie shouted, her facade cracking a little. Without a confirmation the Tupolew dropped onto the runway, right behind Jackie in her Hornet. Even through her noise cancelling headset, she could hear the tires of the heavy airliner screeching against the asphalt as the emergency brakes were slowing the jet down.

She kept a worried eye on Karas plane as it wallowed around from left to right, nearly sliding off the runway, but thankfully bleeding enough energy to come to a full stop about halfway down the track.

Tearing off her oxygen mask and swiping the sweat from her face her glove she heaved a sigh of relief before calling the tower. “Husky 1-1, Kiers Tower. RAA-708 has landed and is not able to vacate runway.”

The air traffic controller in the tower sounded just as relieved as he answered her call. “Roger that Husky 1-1. Proceed to parking area via taxiway charlie. Emergency Vehicles are deploying to assist in the evacuation of RAA-708.”

Confirming her instructions she began leaving the runway. While she rolled along the taxiway, she opened her canopy to glance back at the Tupolew 154. The hulking tri-jet sat almost sideways on the runway, it’s landing gear smoking and its engines spooling down as they flamed out from fuel starvation. As her plane opened she was hit by a whack of freezing cold air, much like what hit her when she left the barracks this morning.

Only this time, the cool air was a welcome change to the stuff and heated atmosphere inside her cockpit and under her mask. She threw a couple of glances back to see how the evacuation was going. The bases’ firefighters had managed to get a hydraulic lift up to the main door behind the cockpit and were trying to open it.

 

While all of this was going on she found herself in thought again. All of this had transpired just now and yet it was hard to believe. She did it. She really did. That was the thought that was going through her head at a mile a minute, yet it failed to register.

While she was approaching her parking position, she absentmindedly overheard the chatter of Finch and Gibs getting their permission to land on the other, still usable runway and touching down themselves. 

Rolling up to her parking spot, she began the shutdown procedures for her plane but was interrupted by about twenty people from the ground personnel who came rushing to her plane, cheering and chattering excitedly.

Only upon seeing the cheering crowd did her brain finally kick into gear and she realized what had happened. In one moment her anxious and dreamy demeanor changed into unstifled laughing. She really had done it!

She waved to the crowd, stepping onto the boarding ladder which they had brought with them. Her wingmen in the meantime had pulled into their parking positions and were getting serviced by the few members of the ground crew who hadn’t immediately rushed to great Jackie.

After descending the ladder Jackie found herself in the midst of a swarm of compliments, congratulations and back pats. She certainly didn’t hate attention like this, but with the sudden sensation of victory more or less abated, she was beginning to feel constricted.

Still smiling, but getting weary she squeezed her way through the crowd and began making her way towards the airliner. The cold air biting her sweat dampened face and gust of icy wind blowing clouds of thin, powdery snow into her stride.

While she was walking towards the Tupolew, she slowly drifted into her own thoughts again.  
Though she was happy beyond belief, there was still something irking her, that was keeping her from fully enjoying this occasion: The dogfight her squadron mates had with those two unidentified airplanes. It would have been too crass of a coincidence for these two events to have not been in some way connected. She mulled over this briefly, before abandoning this line of thought. “Gee, I think Gibs rubbed off on me. I’m reading too much into this.”

Just as she thought of her conspiratist Wingman she heard his voice calling out to her.  
“Hey, wait up captain!” He called excitedly, obviously taking in the elated mood.  
When Jackie turned around, she saw the two other members of Husky squad hurrying to catch up. with her.

“I did tell you not to call me captain.”Jackie sighed, turning back to continue towards her destination. “Why the long face, Jackie? Aren’t you pleased with yourself?” Finch probed, in his typical stoic yet earnest tone.

“That dogfight you two got into. Don’t you think it’s a little…” she paused for a moment to try and think about how she was gonna phrase her question. “...weird, that these two events coincided?” She said gesturing towards the airliner, which was drawing closer as they were heading for it.

The moment she said that Gibs’ eyes lit up. “It’s strange isn’t it?” He practically beamed, completely off beat from any sort of tone this conversation had had until that point.

 

Finch sighed. “You know for someone who just got involved in something that could just as well turn into an international crisis, you’re far too happy about all of this.”

“I’m not happy we had to fight off those guys, but still I find it delightfull.” He declared, grinning like a fool. “Ah, and why is that?” Jackie asked, not sure herself whether she was genuinely interested or just wanted him to get it out of his system.

“Well you see,” he began while sticking his index finger as high in the air as he could manage. “If the person in that plane over there turns out to be who I think they are, then all the pieces fall into line and-”

He was cut short by Finch sticking his hand in front of his face. “Just cut it, as if you were able to guess exactly who this Kara person is.” There was only so much Finch was willing to take of Gibs’ crazy ramblings, especially after what the three had gone through.

“It’s not even noon yet and you two are already back on your bullshit? How are you gonna get through the day Finch.” Jackie joked, having relaxed a bit. The three of them shared a laugh as they finally arrived at the resting Tu-154.

 

The firefighters had just checking to make sure no part of the plane posed any potential fire hazard and were opening the door. Two of the early response medics entered the plane, while the three pilots of Husky squad waited outside, all of them wanting to meet this Kara in person.

A couple of minutes later the two medics exited the plane, accompanied by the girl they were all waiting for. She was wearing a dark green dress that perfectly complimented her grey green eyes, black high heels and voluminous red hair was braided in a way that Jackie couldn’t even begin to imagine how someone managed to style it that way. 

To put it short she looked stunning. Even though Jackie had been looking at her for most of their endeavour in the air, she failed to notice how good looking her involuntary trainee pilot was.

The medics and Kara descended down the ladder and the medics made way for Kara to meet her saviours. Even her walk had something tantalizing about it. She managed to carry herself in such a way that you almost couldn’t tell that she had just been through a very traumatic situation.

“I did not think I would get to thank you in person, Jackie.” She spoke, her voice carrying the same diligence as her walk just now. “Well I told you we would make it, didn’t I?” Jackie Chuckled, extending her hand. “By the way he haven’t properly introduced ourselves yet, have we? I am captain Jacklyn Reiges, this is first Lieutenant David H. Finch and second Lieutenant Sheldon Gibs. At your service.”

As Kara extended her hand towards Jackies, all manner of thoughts were going through Husky squads’ heads. But (almost) none of them could have predicted what she was about. to say.

“I am Princess Kara of Aurelia, and I am forever thankful for your help.”


	3. Burning Horizons

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A big thanks goes out to my main man Frosty for the beautiful artwork he created. Check out his tumblr!  
> https://frostiboi.tumblr.com/

# 

# Chapter 2: Burning Horizons

 

The warm break lounge was a welcome respite from the biting cold outside. Several hours had passed since Kara was miraculously rescued by the pilots of Husky squad and the four of them were enjoying a hot coffee in the break lounge, still conversing about the events of the last couple of hours.

 

“This tastes great.” Kara said while grimacing at the steaming cup of black coffee held in her hands. Finch, who had been in charge of “coffee duty” this day, found her facial expression greatly amusing.

  
“You know princess, there’s no shame in not liking coffee. I mean look at the captain! She adamantly refuses each time I offer her a cup and sticks to hot chocolate instead.”

 

“Well yeah it’s because the coffee you guys make could for all intensive purposes be used as jet fuel.” Jackie countered.

 

The three pilots shared a hearty laugh, with Kara chuckling along, though trying to stifle it for fear of being impolite. “Though I do find the coffee you provided most tasteful, I do have to admit my stomach has not yet calmed down sufficiently” Kara politely remarked, having warmed up to her saviours.

 

“Can’t say I blame ya.” Gibs quipped while taking a sip from his cup. “All things considered you’re actually in pretty good shape for what you have been through.”

 

“Thank you lieutenant. As a member of the royal family I have been trained to keep my dignified demeanor as a princess from a very young age. As a matter of fact I still feel the need to apologize for my uncomposed and downright unprofessional behaviour.”

 

“Unprofessional? Hell you’re making it sound like that princess training of yours includes the operation of passenger aircraft.”

 

This retort From finch elicited a slight, again stifled chuckle from Kara. “I’m afraid it does not. No, I feel the need to apologize because I have been brought up on the strict principle of not being a burden to other through my actions or emotions.”

 

Jackie snorted. “Nonsense. Even if you had been a burden to us, it was through no fault of your own. I mean there is no way you could have known your flight would end up like it did.”

 

Any potential answer Kara might have had got cut short when commander Townsley entered the break room, followed by one of the paramedics who was among the first responders to Karas’ plane when it finally ended.

 

“So, what’s the word, Chief?” Gibs asked his commander before downing the last of his coffee in one swig. Townsley just shook his head and gestured for the paramedic to step forward.

  
“I’m afraid there was nothing we could do for the two pilots of the airliner. We could not determine the exact cause of death as of yet I’m afraid.” The burly medic spoke solemnly. “Furthermore we have not been able to locate your Butler anywhere on the plane and thusly are forced to assume that he got sucked out of the airplane when the door got blown off.”

 

“I-” Kara spoke up, staggering for but one second before regaining her composure. “I see. Thank you very much sir.”

 

The medic nodded and took his leave. Now the Commander took his turn to speak. “We’re currently in the process of recovering your luggage from the plane, your highness. Though it appears as if the blown out door ripped open part of the cargo hold and so we will need you to check in later to see if anything has been lost.”

 

Again, Kara responded with a dignified smile on her face. “Thank you very much Commander. Is there anything I can be of assistance with?”

 

“As a matter of fact there is something. You see, while you are most definitely welcome here, we’re still unsure about the nature of this visit. I mean after all it’s not common for visitors of royalty to come unannounced.”

 

This elicited a slightly troubled look from Kara. The pilots of Husky squad were looking at the princess intently, also wanting to know the reason for her sudden stopover.

 

“I had been told that the purpose of this visitation was to do a tour of the new capitol building in Courbet and to strengthen political relations between Aurelia and Cayenne before my upcoming coronation.”

 

“That’s odd,” Townsley remarked, rubbing his chin while mustering the young princess. After a couple of moments he spoke up again “I’m terribly sorry your highness, but we have not been informed of any such thing as a political visitation to Courbet. Though I am sure this might have only been a miscommunication of sorts. I will try contacting the department of foreign affairs in Courbet to get this mess sorted out. Until then you are more than welcome to stay here. Reiges?”

 

“Yes sir?” Jackie answered, basically catapulting out of her seat to try and act professionally. This drew an amused chuckle from Gibs and an ever so slight grin from Finch.

 

“Please help the princess with collecting her baggage. You can show her around the base while you’re at it.”

 

The captain was trying her level best to not grimace at her apparent degradation to babysitting a princess. It’s not like she didn’t like Kara, but she definitely thought that there are other things that her time would be better spent on. Like sleeping. “Yes sir.” she acknowledged managing to keep her ‘professional fighter pilot’ shtick up. She turned to Kara, who in the meantime had also risen from her seat and motioned for her to follow.

 

The two of them left the break lounge and headed out for the tarmac. The wind had picked up quite and it was blowing lose snow across the plowed taxiways. Even though it wasn’t even 2pm yet, the sun was already creeping near the horizon.

 

“Is it really evening already?” Kara inquired, struggling to keep pace with Jackie who had a relatively brisk walking speed. Jackie simply shrugged. “Well more or less. We’re so far south that sun is a rarity in the summer.”

 

“How very strange. And I have never seen this much snow i n my entire life either.”

 

“And I have rarely seen a day without it. You get used to it eventually trust me. Same with the cold.”

 

Perking up at the pilots’ remark of the climate, Kara began to shiver as if noticing the biting cold just now. “Even if you get used to this, aren’t you cold? You’re not even wearing a Jacket!”

 

Again, Jackie shrugged. “Well I guess this overall is padded fairly well. But we really should work on getting your luggage so you at least put on something warm yourself.”

 

“That would be nice yeah.” Kara seconded trying not to visibly shiver. This, however didn’t go unnoticed by Jackie and although she chose not to comment on it, she had to admit she was impressed by the effort.

 

The two of them started to make their way across the airfield towards the parked Tupolew with Kara still struggling to match Jackies’ pace. As the two of them were passing the parked planes of Husky squad, Jackie stopped in her tracks raised her hand and yelled. “Yo Leah, what are you doing out here? Isn’t it a bit cold for abstract art?”

 

Kara, who had been eying the resting F-18s with idle fascination, tore her gaze away from the dormant aeroplanes to follow Jackie's’ line of sight. She spotted a woman, about the same age as she was, dressed in a dark blue overall, similar in make to the one Jackie was wearing declaring her status as a mechanic, waving back at the two of them.

 

She was holding onto a paintbrush that was still sparkling with wet, red paint. Smiling she answered Jackie’s call. “And aren’t you too high ranking to play baby sitter?”

 

“First of all I prefer VIP tour guide, and second of all what are you even doing out here?” Kara smirked as she and her guest stepped closer.  

 

“You see, since the skirmish you guys had earlier resulted in an airkill for Finch and Gibs each. And thusly they tasked me with painting their killmarks.” She proudly declared indicating at the red silhouette of a MiG-21 adorning the side of Finch’s plane, looking quite pleased with herself.

“Hold on what do you mean VIP Tour guide?” She added, her self satisfied grin vanishing from her face.

 

Kara took this as her queue to step forward. “Good day, I am princess Kara of Aurelia, pleased to make your acquaintance.” She say in her usual regal tone while offering a brief court bow.

 

Jackie had to bite back a laugh as she watched the colour drain out of the surprised mechanic’s face caramell brown face. Taken aback for a moment, she quickly managed to compose herself. “S-staff sergeant Leah Oxley, at your service.”  She offered a similar yet amusingly botched version of a bow herself, which got a stifled laugh out of the princess.

 

Jackie, laughing at Leah’s embarrassing posture herself, decided to release the young sergeant from this uncomfortable situation. “She’s the brave soul who landed that crate over there.”

 

“Ooooooh, so you’re that person I was kind of wondering whoever you were since David didn’t-” She cut her rambling short as she mentioned Finch’s name and instead promptly switched the topic. “Nevermind that, I think Harris wants you over there ASAP. He was mumbling something weird.”

  
Jackie snorted. “Isn’t he always?”

 

“No no, not his usual kind of weird. You should really go and see what he’s on about.”

 

“Alright I guess I should. We were going that way anyways.” Jackie shrugged as she waved goodbye to Leah.

 

“Goodbye and thank you staff sergeant.” Kara chimed, turning to follow Jackie who was already on her way back to the Tupolew.

 

The young technician stuttered an awkward goodbye to the Princess before returning her attention to the killmarks she had previously been painting.

 

“What a nice young lady.” Kara mused to Jackie, this time managing to keep up with the Pilot a bit better.  
  
“Leah? Oh yeah she’s such a kind soul. She definitely is Harris’s favorite pupil.”

 

“Harris?” The princess asked, not quite following the conversation.

  
“He’s the guy in charge of nearly all maintenance and repairs on this base. He’s a bit of an interesting specimen to say the least, but he’s alright. But don’t take my word for it, you’re gonna meet him in just a moment.”

 

Directing her gaze back towards the hulking figure of the Tupolew that had drawn closer. The resting plane had now become host to a small army of Mechanics scurrying all over its wings and the aft section of the fuselage, meticulously checking for damage and other abnormalities. In front of the airliner, Jackie could see the imposing figure of the scruffy master sergeant, barking orders at the technicians scrutinizing the Tu-154.

 

Noticing Jackie’s gaze, Harris turned around to face the princess and the pilot. “I have to say that was impressive display of airmanship, your highness.” He proclaimed with a boisterous smile.

 

Kara chuckled at the chief mechanics exaggerated greeting. “Good sir, you give me far too much credit. If it had not been for captain Reiges, this whole affair would not have ended as well as it did.”

 

“Aw come on princess, if you hadn’t remained as calm as you did, we couldn’t have pulled this off. Give yourself some credit, you were the one behind the stick after all.” Jackie interjected, lightly patting Kara on the shoulder.

 

“At any rate you got her down in one piece and that’s all that matters.” Harris resumed, dampening his boisterous voice to a somewhat unhinged monotone. “I take you are here to recover your luggage? Gooood, we’ve stacked all the bags and briefcases we could find in the cargo hold over there. It appears the hold has been damaged by the door that blew off the aircraft so we don’t know what, if anything, is missing.”

 

“Thank you very much, sir.” Kara said, turning to Jackie. “I shall be off then, thank you for everything captain.” She continued, followed by another one of her court bows.

 

The pilot replied with a lazy salute and a “Don’t mention it, your highness.”

 

With the princess striding off in the direction of the luggage pile, Harris idly mumbled. “What a damn miracle this is.” Which drew a dry nod from Jackie, who in turned towards the disheveled looking technician. “Sure is. But nevermind that. Leah mentioned something was bugging you.”

 

Harris scratched his head, eying the Tupolew. “Did she? Well I originally wanted to have my guys look into this further before it spread, but from how things look at the moment the door blowing out wasn’t an accident.”

 

“What makes you say that?”

 

“You see, there are burn marks where the hinges where. Almost looks like that was the work of breaching charges.”

 

Jackie cocked her head, shooting him a quizzical look. “Breaching Charges? You sure it wasn’t just the emergency release of the door malfunctioning?”

  
“This model of airplane doesn’t have an explosive bolt release mechanism. Also I had a quick chat with the paramedics dealing with the two pilots. They aren’t certain yet but as of now it looks like the cause of death was nothing natural.”

 

“What do you mean by that?”  
  
“Poison.” Harris coldy replied, turning his gaze from the Tupolew to face the young pilot. “They aren’t certain as of yet but all the evidence points toward that.”

 

Jackie remained silent, not having processed this shocking information quite yet. She waited for him to continue.

 

“But don’t tell anyone about this. I don’t want unfounded rumours causing any sort of trouble around here. This is all strange enough as it is.”

 

“You’ve got my word Harris, no worries.” She said turning around to head for the luggage pile. “I’ll see if our royal guest needs some help with her-”

 

She got cut short by the sudden blaring of the base’s emergency air raid sirens. The sudden cacophony made everyone on the field perk up for a second in surprise until everyones training kicked in. The mechanics were hurrying off the airliner and were rushing towards the parked Hornets of Husky squad. Jackie took a second to realize the situation herself before sprinting towards the command building.

 

On her way she passed several mechanics pushing dolleys laden with missiles for their planes and fuel trucks hurrying to fill up the F-18s. The semi frozen tarmac underneath her boots crackled ever so slightly as her heavy footfalls carried her towards the grey building.

 

She stormed through the front door and into the locker rooms. She threw on her g-suit and her helmet in less than a fourth of the time she took earlier that day. Racing outside, she immediately ran for her Hornet.

 

Finch an Gibs were already at work in their planes, going through the startup sequence. She raced up the boarding ladder that had been prepared by the ground crew and strapped herself in. She ran through the startup by instinct, her eyes darting back and forth through the cockpit.

 

When the radio came online she could already hear the almost frantic voice of Darkstar calling out to them. “Husky 1, come in!”

 

Still busy waking up her sleeping Hornet, she answered. “Darkstar, Husky 1 receiving.”

 

“Husky squad, scramble scramble scramble! This is an emergency, you need to get airborne as soon as possible. You are authorized for a rolling takeoff at your own discretion and will receive an inflight briefing.”

 

“Husky 1, affirmative.” She answered, the startup for her fighter now complete. She called out two her wingmen, checking to see if they were ready. “2, 3, you guys ready to roll?”

 

“2 copies.”

 

“3 affirmative.”

 

“Right, after me then. We won’t do a formation start this time, seems they want us up ASAP.”

 

“So you don’t know what this is about either Jacks?” Gibs probed, sounding noticeably worried. Before Jackie could answer Finch interjected. “It’s probably just a drill or something.”

 

“Does this look like a drill to you?” Husky 1 retorted. “If you ask me, this whole situation stinks.”

 

“Hey that’s my line!” Gibs lamented easing up a little. Normally this would have been cause for amusement among the pilots, but as Jackie had aptly put it, this situation really did stink.  
This had none of the hallmarks of a drill.

 

The three Huskies were practically racing along the Taxiways, as fast as was safe to do, their engines kicking up billows of snow along their path. Jackie was the first to reach their designated runway. Since they were cleared to take off at their own discretion, she rolled onto the runway and immediately pushed the throttle into afterburner. Her Hornet lurched forward, its powerful engines rapidly pushing it towards takeoff speed.

 

A couple of moments later, Husky 1 was airborne, shortly followed by the other two members of Husky squad. “Darkstar Husky squad is airborne and ready for deployment, what do you have for us?” Jackie called out, once again trying to maintain her professional fighter pilot spiel.

 

“Husky Squad, Darkstar, be advised: We have multiple reports of explosions and possible cruise missile strikes on various military installations along the south and west coast. Confirmation pending. High command ordered all available planes to scramble to defend our airspace against possible attacks.”

 

“Acknowledged, Darkstar. What are our current orders?”

 

A short pause followed, as if Darkstar himself didn’t know what the current orders or even the current situation was as of yet. After a couple of seconds his voice crackled back over the radio. “Husky Squad, your current orders to fly CAP along the Kiers Point defense perimeter. That is all the information we have as of now.”

 

“Roger that, Husky squad commencing cap.” Jackie replied, a hint of annoyance shining through her voice. This lack of information was immensely frustrating since even the GCI at Kiers End didn’t seem to know what exactly was going on.”

 

“Looks like we’re on on CAP duty for the time being gents.” Jackie remarked to her squadron mates, starting to bank into an orbit above the city of Kiers Point.

 

“Are we really being attacked? This has to be some sort of communications error.” Finch assessed, matching his leads’ maneuver.  
  
Gibs remained uncharacteristically quiet throughout this maneuver. He simply did his best to keep formation with the other two planes. It was now 3pm and the sunlight was fading quickly. Below the three Hornets, the lights of the city of Kiers Point had begun to come alive, giving the entire area ghostly halo through the evening haze. Jackies’ gaze lazily drifted from the sun slowly drifting below the horizon, back into her cockpit. Idly waiting for further instructions from GCI, she flicked through the different pages on one of the displays worked into the Dashboard.

 

She paused upon reaching the stores page, that displayed the aircrafts’ current loadout. Not sure what to feel about what she saw, she called out to her wingmen again. “Guys, is it just me or did they screw every missile they had in store onto our planes.”

 

“2 affirms, I have no idea what they want us to do with this much ordnance.”

 

“They fitted us out for a war, they’re gonna make us fight one.” Gibs coldly remarked.

Before any of his two squadron mates could ask what he meant by that, a series of bright flashes just to the south of the airbase caught the pilots’ eyes. Though none of them wanted to believe what was happening twenty thousand feet below them: a clear cut, deliberate attack heralded by the brilliant flashes of explosions.

 

In a frenzy, Jackie practically yelled into the radio. “Darkstar, Husky 1, we are seeing explosions about ten miles south of the base please confirm.”

 

This time more time passed. Seconds in which the flashing below them continued.  
“Darkstar, Husky 1, do you copy?” She called again and again the ground controller remained silent.

 

“Did anyone see the base getting hit?” Finch asked, worry now seeping into his usually calm and collected voice.

 

“Negative 2.” Gibs answered, staring down at the dancing sparks. Even at this altitude you could clearly see the impacts far short of the airstrip.

 

Finchs’ eyes darting back and forth between the faint runway lights. Confirming for himself that the base had yet to be harmed, he quickly lifted his oxygen mask to heave a sigh of relief, unbeknownst to his colleagues.

 

“Well if the base is fine then what the hell is Darkstar-” Gibs muttered.  
  
“Husky Squad, Darkstar, come in!”

 

“Nevermind that I guess.” He finished, still sounding disgruntled, even though he was secretly relieved to finally hear the ground controllers voice again.

 

Not missing a beat, Jackie promptly answered, still looking at the spectacle of dancing lights below. “Darkstar, Husky squad receiving. We’ve got a full tank of gas and are ready to rumble, what do you have for us.”

Darkstar this time sounded clearly distressed. “Ten contacts have breached our air defense perimeter, possibly hostile. Move to intercept, BRA: 010, for 150 at angels 20. You are cleared to engage. Good luck Husky Squad.”

 

“Husky squad copies, moving to intercept.” Jackie answered, slightly surprised at her own level of professionalism. In truth this whole situation had her mind racing. She was acting more out of reflex than by choice as she put her airplane on an intercept course with the alleged enemy contacts.

 

Husky squad pushed their F-18s into full afterburner and began racing towards the northern edge of their airspace. Soon they had left the small island nation behind them and were streaking through the clear evening sky over the antarctic ocean.

 

The radio silence between the squad was almost as icy as the wind rushing past their canopies. Normally they would be talking and joking among themselves to pass the time but the series of events currently unfolding back on the ground had everyone in varying states of distress.

 

Jackie so far had managed to suppress everything rather well all things considered. Being in the cockpit almost always put her in a clear state of mind. Finch was almost in a state of panic, as was Darkstar. Something that was almost uncharacteristic for both of them.

 

As for Gibs, he was being unusually agitated, sounding almost bitter in his radio transmissions. Normally he was laid back and mostly carefree in nearly all situations.

 

Again, the pilots could feel the tension, though this time it was a different kind to the one they felt earlier this day when they rushed to Kara’s aid. Minutes had gone by, in which their targets were inching ever closer. Jackie decided to try and ease the atmosphere a bit, for no better reason than to clear her wingmens’ heads a bit. She knew them well enough to know this was bothering them a whole lot more than it was bothering her.

 

“So this IS for real, huh.” She mused into the radio only addressing her squad mates tangentially.

 

“How do you figure? Is it ‘cause of the explosions just short of our base?” Finch quipped half sarcastically, trying almost desperately to follow along with Jackies attempt at breaking the tension.

 

“Nope. Actually Darkstars’ accent shone through in that last radio transmission.”

 

This time Finch almost snapped to attention. “Accent what do you mean?”

 

Finally Gibs took his turn speaking up, though he still sounded agitated, it had lessened since his last call. “Oh he was born in Belka, right?”

 

“Zat is correct!” Husky 1 snidely remarked, putting on the best Belkan accent she could muster. “Though you gotta give him credit, you couldn’t tell if you didn’t know.” She added.

 

“Interesting, how come I didn’t know about that?” Finch replied, trying to sound hurt for comedic effect. The almost paralyzing anxiety of the last couple of minutes nearly forgotten as he shared a laugh with the other two pilots.

 

“He actually doesn’t like to talk about it. I don’t know much more about the matter myself.” 3 remarked, also having snapped back to his usual self.

 

Jackie really would have loved to keep this lighthearted conversation going, but as she was letting her gaze wander across the horizon she spotted several contrails in the direction that Darkstar had given them earlier. Almost as if if someone had flipped a switch insider her brain she went back into her ‘professional flight lead’ role again.

 

“Contrails, 10 o’clock low.” She yelled into the radio.

 

Her squadmates immediately fanned out into a combat spread and readied their weapons systems. “Are you sure these guys are hostile? I mean could we try talking to them before we try killing them?” Gibs asked, trying one last time to displace the fact that a war had broken out apparently.

 

His answer though, didn’t come in form of an answer from his squad mates, but from his radar warning receiver that suddenly started blaring the alarm tone for an enemy lock up.

 

“The diplomatic approach is out of the window, Gibs.” Jackie huffed, her own RWR flashing up in the same erratic matter. They had now closed enough to the group of enemy planes to see exactly who and what they were facing.

 

The group consisted of seven Tupolew Tu-95 Bear heavy bombers and three Mirage M-2000 fighters. The Mirages had already turned and locked up Husky squad and were nearly ready to fire. With seconds before the fight would commence Jackie gave orders to her squad mates. “2, 3 go after the bombers. We don’t want those guys reaching the mainland so you need to bring them down. I’m gonna go and play with their escort.”

 

No sooner had she finished talkin that three while trails separated and started streaking towards them. All three members of Husky Squad broke away and the missiles all lost track and flew off into the distance.

 

Seconds later the dogfight was in full swing: Husky squad zoomed through the escort and went straight for the bombers. The Mirages, turning in pursuit of the Hornets suddenly found themselves facing Jackie, who had executed a 180° right after streaking through their formation. Suddenly faced with a flurry of cannon fire from the F-18 the hostile fighters scattered with two breaking high and the other going low. Her mind racing to process everything that was going on around her Jackie resolved to go after the Mirage that had dived down. Rolling her Hornet onto its back she pulled after after the M-2000 that was speeding towards a lone cloud several thousand feet below them.

 

With the distraction having seemingly worked, the other two members of Husky squad found themselves racing towards the swarm of bombers heading towards their homeland. With seconds to spare, both of them readied a Sidewinder heat seeking missile shot towards the formation.

 

No sooner had they selected their weapons that the tell tale screech emitting from the seeker heads of the missiles indicated a lock. The Sidewinders separated from the Hornets’ wingtips with an audible ‘THUNK’ and raced towards the formation of bears. The missile fired by Gibs hit one of the trailing planes, throwing all manner of shrapnel into the inboard engine on the port side of the bomber. The massive turboprop, trying to keep the counter rotating propellers attached to it rotating, started billowing black smoke seconds before spewing fire from its exhaust ports before finally detonating completely, basically ripping the entire left wing off the aircraft and sending it into a death spiral.

 

Finchs’ missile struck the Leading Tupolew directly into the cockpit, basically decapitating the hulking bear. Not regarding the mortally wounded Bomber, Husky 2 and 3 burst through the enemy formation. As they blew past the massive airplanes, both of them managed to catch a glimpse of the roundel painted onto the vertical stabilizers of the bears.

 

“Aw shit it really is the Aurelians.” Finch muttered, not really expecting an answer. Even greater was his surprise when Darkstar suddenly piped up again. “Husky 1, please confirm?”

 

His brain kicking into gear he promptly answered.  “Darkstar, Husky 2 confirming enemy planes as Aurelian.” While he was talking him and Gibs had taken their panes into a Climb to come at the Tu-95s again from above.

 

While her wingmen were busy attacking the bombers, Jackie found herself chasing after one of the Mirages. The Delta winged fighter had burst into a cloud presumably in an attempt to escape.

 

She followed the Aurelian fighter into the cloud, her eyes straining against the mass of the cloud engulfing her plane. The world outside was cast in a thick, gray veil as she pursued her adversary. Though in her mind time seemed to slow to a crawl, she was only inside the cloud for a couple of seconds before her Hornet burst free, breaching the the mass of the cloud like a whale breaching the surface of the ocean.

 

It didn’t even take a second for her to relocate the fleeing Mirage. The Aurelian a pulled his plane into a loop, in an attempt to slot in behind Jackie while she was regaining her bearings.

But he had underestimated the vigilance and aggressiveness of his foe, as Jackie janked hard on the control column to bring the Hornets nose around on the delta winged fighter.

 

 

 

The Mirage pilot reacted in kind, hastily trying to get his plane to tip over. But the Mirage was too low on energy from his climb up into the loop and the plane reacted sluggishly.

With his canopy facing Jackie, the Aurelian pilot watched with growing horror that his CAF enemy was gaining on him and that he had no chance of getting out of the way.

 

With the g-forces crushing her into her seat, she struggled against the blackout to keep her target sighted. With the nose of her plane slowly drifting in front of the struggling M-2000,

she slowly released the pressure on the stick. The black curtain around her peripheral vision lifted to reveal she was in a perfect firing position. Without even thinking, she switched to her 20 millimeter rotary cannon and depressed the trigger.

 

The cannon promptly roared to life, spitting a deadly stream of fire at the Mirage. Aided by the hornets Radar, the aim was true and the rounds connected with their target. The mixed stream of high explosive and armor piercing ammunition raked a deadly line across the fuselage of the Aurelian plane, from nosecone to exhaust nozzle.

 

Not even a second later the plane detonated in a brilliant flash, its fuel tanks igniting in the fuselade. Jackie though, didn’t have time to revel in her victory as the stern bleeping of multiple warning systems blared through her headphones.

 

One was the stall warning, reminding her that she had bled a lot of energy to gain lead on the Mirage, in a maneuver that ultimately left her vulnerable. And the other was her RWR telling her that at least one of the enemy escort fighters had a radar lock on her.

 

Snapping her head around she tried to spot the enemy planes. As her gaze panned behind her, a white streak filled her field of view. A missiles streaked past her, missing only by a couple of feet. Reacting with lightning speed, she followed the trail left by the missile’s engine to its source.

 

And sure enough she spotted the remaining two escort planes racing towards her. Mentally noting the location of her adversaries, she focused on getting her plane back into the fight.

All the fear, anxiety and doubts that had piled up over the last couple minutes were pushed aside with cold professionality. There was no time for any of that right now.

 

She harshly stomped onto the rudder pedals to get her pane to yaw out of the climb that she had found herself in. The plane shuddered as it tipped nose over wing, bleeding the rest of its energy.

 

Though she was now well and truly stalling the maneuver had done its job. The nose of her Hornet was now facing the ocean, and though it was still shaking it was rapidly gaining speed again. No sooner had she recovered from her stall, that the two aurelians raced past her, guns blazing.

 

Jackie had managed to put herself out of the way of the guns of her foes and was now beginning to get back into the fight. She turned, as did the Mirages so that the they were now racing toward each other again.

 

Again, the Aurelians came on, their guns firing madly at the CAF Hornet. This time however, Jackie was in a position to fire back. She unleashed a stream of 20 millimeter rounds at the oncoming two ship flight.

 

The mirages managed to react just in time and avoided Jackie’s fire, though they had to break up their formation in doing so. This was exactly what Jackie had intended. One of the mirages broke hard to its right and the other dove down.

 

Going through trajectories and pre planned firing solutions in her head, she chose to go after the one that was now making towards the icy ocean below. Her training had taught her that speed was life and altitude was life insurance and so having an altitude advantage was invaluable in a dogfight.

 

She was just about to roll her Hornet over, when a familiar voice spoke up inside her head. It was reciting something that captain Peters had drilled into her and her squad mates a long time ago.

 

“The best time to get in behind someone is when they’re positioning for a shot themselves.”

 

As if struck by lightning Jackie snapped out of her focus on the diving mirage and spun around in her seat. It didn’t even take a second for her to reevaluate the situation at hand.

 

She saw right through what the enemy were trying to do. They were trying to pull a textbook lure maneuver on her. The Mirage that was diving was of course the obvious target and so they thought, Jackie would focus her attention entirely on him, leaving her open for the other opponent to exploit.

 

And with any other opponent this might have worked, but they didn’t factor in Jackie’s attentiveness. As soon as she realised that she was getting set up, she reworked her engagement strategy.

 

Jacky rolled her Hornet onto its back, trying to convince the flanking Mirage that she had committed to an attack that would set her in the proper position for his ambush.

The faint worked and she watched the she M-2000 pull around sharply directly towards her.

 

She continued her ruse, slightly pulling back on the control column and pulling her Hornet into a split-s maneuver, all while keeping her eyes locked firmly on the Aurelian fighter to her right.

 

“Keep comin’ around. C’mon, just a little more.” She mumbled to herself as she watched the Mirage come around. The mirage was now heading straight for her. It was closing at such a rate that details were quickly becoming more distinct on the enemy plane.

In the few moments she had before she could evade the incoming attack, Jackie managed to spot a red and white trim running in a zig-zag line along either side of the cockpit, contrasting the dark gray base color of the fuselage.

 

“NOW!” She shouted into her oxygen mask as she yanked the control column around, rolling her hornet out of it’s dive and bringing it nose to nose with the approaching aurelian fighter at the last moment. The enemy pilot almost didn’t react in shock, but managed to correct his own course to not plow into Jackie’s hornet.

 

The fight was on again. Both fighters passed head to head and canopy to canopy. As soon as they had thundered past each other, Jackie pulled her jet hard into the vertical to loop around on her opponent. The aurelian, who was still struggling to process the situation, was slow to react. By the time he started evasive maneuvers,  Jackie was firmly on his six and not matter what he tried he couldn’t shake her.

 

“I should still have about ten more seconds before his buddy should be in position again. If I can take him out in that timeframe, then I can catch his friend with his pants down.” She mumbled to herself, the words coming out in hissed breaths. as she followed the Mirage through gut churning maneuvers. All the while the growling of the seeker head of a sidewinder missile droning in her headset.

 

Ten

 

Nine

 

Eight

 

The mirage broke into a hard left turn, right out of a barrel roll. He lost a lot of energy through this maneuver. Jackie easily managed to stay on him in a lagging pursuit.

 

Seven

 

Six

 

Five

 

He was panicking. Good. He continued pulling through the turn, compression vapor forming on his wings. It wouldn’t be of any use. The Hornet has far better low speed maneuverability than the delta winged M-2000.

 

Four

 

Three

 

Two

 

He tried reversing the turn at le last second, but at this point he was close to stalling and the roll around left him vulnerable.

 

“One” Jackie snarled, a wicked smile spreading underneath her mask. The steady growling of the sidewinder grew into a shrill shriek as the seeker head found its target. With a thunk the missile slid off the rail and towards the Mirage.

 

Zero. An explosion heralded the death of the aurelian airplane. The pilot just managed to eject before the plane was consumed entirely by fire.

 

Mesmerized, she watched the the pilot drifted towards the ice sheet below on his parachute.

Her mind had gone from focused to absolutely fixed on this one target. The adrenaline in her system had forced her into tunnel vision. But she was enjoying it. She felt like she was in control. She felt like nothing could harm her.

 

Until that voice in the back of her mind made itself known again. “One, two, three..”

It counted. She snapped out of it. He she practically spun around in her seat. And what she saw behind her made her eyes widen.

 

The third Mirage had caught up to her. In just ten seconds the situation had turned twice and she had gone from being the hunter to being the hunted again.  She tried to switch back to her analytical calm pilot mind, but her brain just wouldn’t kick into gear.

 

She was on the defensive. And her opponent was gaining ground fast.  
“Ohshiohshitoshit!” She choked up the words through gritted teeth. He head was swinging from her dashboard to the Aurelian behind her. Her plane was shouting warnings at her, telling her that she had been radar locked by her enemy.

 

The feeling of absolute superiority, that bordered almost on carnal enjoyment, she’d felt just seconds ago had collapsed and now primal fear had taken its place. The realization that she might die in the next couple of seconds hit her like a moving freight train. And it kept hitting her again and again with each new bleeping tone her plane was throwing out. Radar, altitude, RWR, the radio, everything was fighting for her attention.

 

Someone was trying to raise her on the tactical frequency but her mind was too divided. Every fiber of her body dedicated to fighting for her life in what now amounted to a fit

of blind panic.

 

An urgent beeping forced itself into her sphere of attention just milliseconds before white hot tracer fire started buzzing past her canopy. The Mirage had opened fire on her with its cannon and his aim was just a bit too much on point to be of Jackie’s liking.

 

A loud ‘BANG’ rang through the cockpit,as a round bounced off her right wing. Thankfully, it didn’t explode, but instead it drew a gash right across the CAF Roundel painted onto the surface.

 

Caught up in her panic, she began throwing her Hornet into the same type of maneuvers that had cost her last opponent his plane. The Mirage behind her, though struggling, did not quite manage to keep up in straight pursuit, but at this point all he’d have to do was hang back and wait to get his shot. And Jackie was too frenzied to notice.

 

Another flurry of cannon fire from the Aurelian fighter hurtled past her canopy, the only thing between her head and a messy death was a couple of centimeters of acrylic glass. There was something trying urgently to get her attention through her headset but she couldn’t quite make it out.

 

Another burst of fire, this time coming dangerously close to gutting her plane, was loosed. And there was this thing trying to get at her again. A voice. Was someone trying to reach her on the radio? Nevermind that, she had more important things to do right now. Like surviving.

 

But no matter how hard she tried to ignore it, there was that voice again. She was hurling her plane into another turn she reluctantly decided to give the nagging voice some of her attention.

 

She caught it ´mid sentence. “-1 BREAK BREAK BREAK!” The voice, suddenly as loud as if the speaker was sitting on her lap, boomed into her headset. Her head instantly clearing, she was able to make two assessments:  
  
One: She had no idea who the guy trying to get to her was, at least not by the sound of his voice.

 

Two: No matter who he was, he sure did sound urgent so she had better do what he was telling her to do and BREAK BREAK BREAK.

 

And break she did. She didn’t know exactly where but this sure as hell wouldn’t stop her. She rolled her Hornet onto its back and did a Split-S for good measure.And not a moment too soon, because no sooner had her plane tipped into the vertical, that the Mirage behind her Burst in a brilliant explosion.

 

Before she could ask what in the world was going on the voice in her headset chirped up again. “Direwolf 1, splash one!”

Pulling back into the horizontal, Jackie spoke up, addressing her newfound wingman. “I have no idea where you came from but thank you Direwolf 1. You really saved my bacon just now.”

 

A moment passed in which Jackie tried to spot her saviour among the mess of contrails and clouds that were tinged bright orange in the dying evening sun. But no matter how hard she looked, she couldn’t spot Direwolf in the evening gloom. She let her gaze sweep back to check her radar telemetry, which she had neglected to do during her dogfight and the ensuing panicked flight.

 

The radar didn’t show anything, but the RWR did. A single contact designated with the number 14. At this moment her brain fully kicked into gear again. She knew that voice! And the pilot it belonged to. But before she could say anything Direwolf spoke up again, a sly hint of mischief entering his voice.

  
“Wait a minute. Panda, is that you?”

 

That confirmed it. Grinning widely underneath her oxygen mask, Jackie basically yelled into her microphone. “Holiday! I’d never thought I’d say this but I am so glad you decided to swing by.”

 

Chuckling, the other pilot responded. “Well am I happy to hear that. But all banter aside, do you and your people have any idea what in the world is going on right now?”

 

“We don’t know much more than you do most likely.” She said, pushing the banter aside for now. “All we know is that there have been reports of attacks on several military targets and that it’s apparently all orchestrated by the Aurelians.”

 

Holiday wanted to speak up but got cut short by Gibs, who sounded as excited as Jackie did. “Yo Holiday, seems like you’ve missed the party! We already had our fun with the bombers.”

Almost as an afterthought he added. “Oh and thanks for helping the Captain out.”  
  
“Holy crap, they’re still letting you fly, Nutjob? I thought you’d been demoted to clearing out the latrines ages ago!” Laughed boastfully, exuding an air of confidence that made Jackie envious. He made it look so easy.

 

Gibs, not happy with the use of his pilot tag, simply responded with “Suck my ass, Holiday.”  
It wasn’t custom among the members of Husky squad to use the callsigns all of them had gotten upon receiving their pilot qualifications.

 

“Since the two of you are here, I’m guessing that Hotshot isn’t far off either?” The boisterous F-14 pilot continued. Finch, took this as a queue and spoke up. “What do ya think, Terry?” His voice was tinged with a little hint of bitterness. The both of them were fierce rivals back during flight training.

 

“Aw, C’mon David! Aren’t you at least a bit happy to see me?”

 

“Under any other circumstance I wouldn’t be. But you happen to be the first friendly contact we have had for a while now. Even Darkstar has gone silent.”

 

“Ah,” Holiday spoke a smidge of disappointment entering his voice. “I was hoping you would be able to tell me what was going on here.” As he spoke he finally pulled up to Husky squad who in turn just formed up again.

 

“Well at least we go another two pairs of eyes on a swivel now.” Jackie huffed solemnly.

“Well yeah but that isn’t gonna do us any good without any orders.” Gibs muttered, moving to Jackie’s left wing. That moment the last knot in her brain finally untangled. She flicked back to the command channel. Taking a moment to compose herself, she finally spoke up again. “Darkstar, Husky 1, enemy engaged and destroyed.”

 

Silence followed. ‘God, can’t things be easy for one bleeding time?’ she thought to herself.

“Darkstar, do you read?” she repeated.

 

“That’s not good.” Finch remarked dryly. Jackie snorted “Thanks for the observation 2.”

 

Jackie was just about to try to raise the GCI at Kiers End again, when a short burst of static nearly made her and her squad mates jump through the canopies. After a second of grating whitenoise the radios of Husky squad and Direwolf 1 relayed the voice of a young woman.

 

“Attention all CAF airplanes! This is AWACS Showtime. There have been confirmed attacks on the military airfields of Archent, Kanin and Courbet. The only known operational airfield left is Kiers End. All assets are to converge at Kiers to regroup and recuperate.”

 

“Well those are orders alright.” Gibs quipped, a slight pinch of joy entering his voice again.

 

Breathing a silent sigh of relief, Jackie spoke up over the radio. “Showtime, Husky Squad and Direwolf 1, confirming instructions. Can you confirm that the GCI at Kiers End is still operational?”

 

“Husky Squad, Showtime, we’re glad to have you! And yes, Darkstar is still in action. His priorities have been somewhat rerouted over the last hours. Emergency flight handling of civilian aircraft and all that.” The young AWACS controller spoke, the urgency in her voice fleeting to a careless almost bubbly tone.

 

“Well great, we get an AWACS and she’s just as much of a nutcase as Gibs is.” Snorted Wyatt over the dedicated channel of Husky squad so that Showtime couldn’t hear him. Gibs wanted to retort something, whether in defence of himself or of the bubbly AWACS controller isn’t known, as he was cut short by a new voice coming up on the general radio channel.

 

“Showtime, Jackdaw squad reporting in!” The voice of a young pilot in obvious distress came over the aether. “Please confirm that Kanin Airforce base is out of operation.”

 

In a blink showtime answered, obviously dimming down her aloof tone to convey the seriousness of the situation. “Showtime confirms, Jackdaw squad. According to available information the base and the surrounding area has been hit by an unknown number cruise missiles. Communications from Kanin AFB have ceased since.”

 

“Lord help us.” The young pilot muttered. “Showtime, can you give us a heading so we can group up with Husky squad?.”  
  
Showtime dutifully relayed the information and a couple minutes later, three black and blue F-2s of the 187th ground attack wing based out of Kanin joined the formation. Apart from the usual greetings among the pilots all chatter in the group died down. The seven planes flew on in radio silence heading south, while the sun sank completely below the horizon. The clouds had grown thicker below them, so even if the sun was out, they wouldn’t be able to see the ground.

 

Since there wasn’t much to see outside anyway, Jackie focused on her instruments. The cockpit was doused in glow of dozens of green LEDs, which gave everything surrounding her a sickly hue.

 

She was looking through her data feeds on one of the displays in the cockpit when the voice of one of Jackdaw squads’ pilots came over the radio.

 

“Hey do you guys see that?” She asked, her voice a mix of curiosity and anxious anticipation. “Can you be a little more precise, Jackdaw 3?” Finch snorted, his head reflexively swiveling around to scan the sky outside his canopy. Not that he could see anything of course.

 

“I just saw a glint on something through the cloud cover, at about 3 o’clock. Quite a bit away, but I definitely did see something.”

 

Jackie, who at this point had been declared the formation leader of this adhog squad, thought this over for a second before speaking up. “We’re getting close to land again. If the damages are really as bad as Showtime said they were, it would probably be best to try and confirm that visually. Our flight path is gonna take us west past Kanin anyways so there is no harm in going below the clouds to check the situation on the ground.”

 

With her eyes flicking between her altimeter and world outside her cockpit, she descended into the fast approaching gray mass over the cloud cover. The seven planes descended, their eyes straining to keep track of each other in the haze.

 

Then planes burst through the lower layer of the clouds and into the stormy night below. There were pretty strong winds kicking the planes around coupled with thick snowflakes that darted almost vertically past their field of view.

 

Jackie turned her head the the left, to look upon the northern island of the nation of Cayenne, which was to her south now. At first glance, she didn’t really spot anything out of the ordinary: There were the city lights of the town of Kiers Point, where she grew up. Her eyes lingered for a second, pushing all urgency aside while she reveled in the sight. No matter how many times she saw her hometown from up high, she still found the sight intoxicating. She shivered slightly at the thought of the bombers that her squad had dealt with. Though she didn’t really want to think about it, she couldn’t help but wonder where they were headed.

 

In her mind, her eyes stayed fixed at the blinking lights of Kiers Point for what felt like an eternity. In reality, she more or less swept over her town with her gaze, remaining just long enough to confirm that yes, it was in fact still there.

 

Lifting her head slightly she expected to find the cities Archent and Kanin both about one hundred kilometers south west of Kiers Point. What she saw, made her heart stop for a moment, and her brain freeze for just as long. It was a sight that would stick with her for the rest of her life.

 

To the southwest she could see huge orange pillars rising into the night sky, painting the clouds a ghastly shade of orange. Two huge funeral pyres that marked the graves of two of Cayennes’ biggest cities.

 

“What-” Jackdaw 1 spluttered, dumbstruck. “What the hell is that.”

 

More out of reflex than will Jackie muttered back, not even sure, if she was pressing the transmitting button. Her voice was cold, shock having blown out all emotions from her. She couldn’t scream in terror, even though she was horrified. She couldn’t cry even though this was probably the most despair inducing event to have happened to her yet. She couldn’t crack. Not now. There are people depending on her.  
  
“Gentleman. I think at this point it’s more than official. We are at war.”


End file.
